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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23684689">The Baker Street House</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qalets/pseuds/qalets'>qalets (Qalets)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV), The Lake House (2006)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Absolutely no Keanu, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - The Lake House (2006) Fusion, Case Fic, Crossover, Don't think about it too hard, Emotional Constipation, Epistolary, Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, London, M/M, Mild Language, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sandwiches in the Morgue, Slow Burn, Time Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:40:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23684689</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qalets/pseuds/qalets</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of his tenancy in a flat in Baker Street Dr John Watson starts a tentative correspondence with the previous tenant: a Mr Sherlock Holmes.<br/><br/>But Sherlock only just moved in.<br/><br/>Together, while two years apart, they begin to fall for each other through letters, while life, and cases, continue around them.<br/><br/>Sherlock fusion with the 2006 film: The Lake House</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mary Morstan/John Watson, Molly Hooper/Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you all for the wonderful reception for this fic. It's a little-known fusion, so i wanted to say right up top that I don't think it requires any prior knowledge of the movie to enjoy it! In fact it might even better if you haven't seen it - that way, I'll get all the credit for the good bits and (hopefully) none of the blame for the paradoxes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Chapter 1</strong>
</p><p>JOHN</p><p>In the hallway of 221 Baker Street was an old writing desk.</p><p>Although it would once have been a rather stately antique, its beauty had faded with time; the dark mahogany paling and smoothed with years of use. Trivially, it now served as a place where post accumulated; the small pigeonholes set into the back holding not the ornate correspondence of yesteryear, but takeaway menus, leaflets for house clearance services and letters addressed to tenants long since forgotten.</p><p>As with a lot of furniture left in the same place for a long period of time, John barely noticed it as he passed by on his way up to his first floor flat. After all, it was only the top right pigeonhole that he need acknowledge; marked simply “B”. And it was almost always empty, he’d told no one the address.</p><p>It was on his friend Mike Stamford’s suggestion that John came to be here, in this draughty flat, living amongst the assorted possessions of a stranger and struggling with more stairs than his current capabilities really allowed.  It had been something to do with an acquaintance who needed someone to look after his place while he was away, though the details had been vague.  </p><p>And now it was all over. It never had been going to last forever. His mysterious absent host was returning, and his services were no longer required.</p><p>Instead he’d found himself a small studio in the strange no-man’s land between the West End and the City; a tiny blank room in a tiny blank block of flats which was both much more cane-friendly and more convenient for his new job at St Bart’s Hospital.</p><p>John was finding leaving this place harder than he had imagined he would. He’d felt more at home in this strange little flat than he’d felt in a long time. These ramshackle possessions beginning to feel so much like his own that he was surprised when he discovered that everything he owned still fit neatly into the two holdalls he’d brought with him all those months ago.</p><p>Fit they did however, and once they were stacked neatly outside, John’s final task was simply to slot the note he’d penned in haste into the correct pigeonhole in the writing desk, turning then, to close the heavy front door behind him.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock said cordially as she opened the front door before him.</p><p>“Sherlock!” Her greeting was infinitely warmer, spoken through a beam of a smile as she moved forward from the step to embrace him. Sherlock bore the ensuing show of affection coolly, realising only half way through the second cheek-kiss that he should be making some effort at reciprocating.</p><p>She released him.</p><p>“Oh Sherlock, are all these yours?” She asked, stepping back and running her eyes over the boxes currently blocking the Baker Street pavement,</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock said neutrally. He disliked stating the obvious.</p><p>“And you…” She started, hopeful, “Brought no one to help bring them upstairs?”</p><p>“No need,” Sherlock replied, springing into action by shouldering a particularly large box and moving past her, “I work best alone,”</p><p>“I see, dear,” She replied, not seeing, but Sherlock was already gone. She caught up with him as he was placing the box on top of the empty desk in the empty sitting room upstairs.</p><p>Sherlock took a moment to survey it all. The room was large, the furniture sparse; just an old sofa against one wall and the desk; sitting beneath the two large windows facing out to Baker Street. He decided he approved of the wallpaper.</p><p>Moving through to the kitchen he scanned the empty cupboards, then circled back to the hall and put his head through into the bedroom.</p><p>“What do you think then Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson asked, calling back to him from the sitting room, “There’s another bedroom upstairs,” She said, and he gave her a look, “If you’ll be needing two bedrooms?” She continued.</p><p>“Of course I won’t be needing two bedrooms.” He answered, moving back past her, his attention caught, not by her but by the doorway behind her.</p><p>“No… friend?” She asked, turning to follow his movements. “Flatmate?” Her tone was hopeful, “That would be joining you?”</p><p>“Not really my area,” Sherlock replied, mainly to the kitchen door, which he was attempting to close.</p><p>“Well then,” The length of her pause gave away her disappointment. He ignored it, peering instead at the mechanism of the door, it appeared to be jammed, he gave it a gentle shake. “Plenty of space to move about in.” She finished, finally.</p><p>“Yes, Mrs Hudson,” He replied absentmindedly,</p><p>“Oh, don’t you be worrying yourself with all that ‘Mrs Hudson’ rubbish, you can just call me…”</p><p>The door screeched into motion, “Got it!” Sherlock exclaimed.</p><p>Mrs Hudson stopped talking.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John’s first shift wasn’t turning out to be a great success.</p><p>“Excuse me?” He asked on finally finding what he hoped was the right desk. The woman behind it gave him a full up and down, her eyes falling unerringly to his cane. She handed him a form:</p><p>“Fill this out for me please and wait over there,” She said neutrally, nodding at the huddle of plastic chairs behind him. Her tone was such that he’d half put out a hand to take the proffered clipboard before he caught himself.</p><p>“No, I’m…” He replied, flustered, “I’m Dr Watson,” There was no recognition in her eyes. “I was told to report here?”</p><p>A full three seconds passed as John stood in the beam of her gaze, before finally she seemed to process the information he’d provided.</p><p>“Oh!” A bright smile replaced her bland expression, “Hi! Great to have you here finally! I’m Molly,” She rushed, then remembered herself, “Dr Hooper,” She stuck out a hand.</p><p>“Yes,” He smiled in recognition, taking it.</p><p>“Mike might have mentioned me,” She breezed, moving past him, he turned to follow, “Sorry about that,” She waved the clipboard, “This isn’t my usual job, I’m not all that used to dealing with people that are, well…”</p><p>She tailed off,</p><p>“Crippled?” John suggested bluntly, trying to shock.</p><p>“Alive.” She parried back.</p><p>“Oh.”</p><p>“Yes,” From the shine in her eyes he could tell she enjoyed having surprised him. “They’ve been short staffed, until you got here. Desperate times.” She smiled again. “You’ll be covering twenty-two patients on rounds today, this floor and the next,” She handed him a stack of clipboards like the one she’d been wielding previously. He caught them one-handed.</p><p>“Twenty-two?” He asked, incredulous.</p><p>She smiled at him: “Quiet morning,”</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock’s mobile was ringing.</p><p>“Mrs Hudson!” Sherlock bellowed from amid the mess of a dozen half-emptied boxes as he tossed the contents about desperately, “Mrs Hudson!” He called again.</p><p>“What dear?” Her voice, at the doorway.</p><p>“Mrs Hudson I can’t find my phone.”</p><p>“Is that what all the commotion is?”</p><p>“Yes. Have you seen it?”</p><p>“I’ve not,”</p><p>The phone continued to ring.</p><p>“Perhaps if you followed the sound…?” She suggested.</p><p>“What do you think I’ve been doing?” He cried from under a heap of bubble wrap.</p><p>“Well there’s no need to take that tone…” She started, not coming any further into the room. A pause, “Is this what you’re looking for?”</p><p>Sherlock finally looked up to see her holding his mobile out to him from the threshold. He dashed forward to snatch it from her.</p><p>“What?!” He asked the moment it was to his ear.</p><p>On the other end of the line Detective Lestrade paused a second too long.</p><p>“Where?” Sherlock asked instead.</p><p>“Farringdon,” Lestrade answered immediately, unfazed. “Turnmill Street. Will you come?”</p><p>“Text me the address,” Sherlock barked, before ringing off.</p><p>The look he gave Mrs Hudson then, from the centre of his own chaos, bordered on elated.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“How are you feeling today?” John asked the patient as he arrived at his bedside, not giving him time to reply as he picked up his chart and starting leafing through it. It had been a long day.</p><p>Finding what he was looking for John immediately caught the arm of a harried looking blonde nurse walking by.</p><p>“I ordered an MRI, stat?” John asked.</p><p>“Transport said about four hours,” She replied, more concerned with the task she was moving toward than this interruption.</p><p>“He could be dead in four hours,” John said plainly, holding her gaze for as long as it took her to shrug a response.</p><p>John sighed, closing the chart with a click.</p><p>“You know what,” he said, catching the eye of the patient, “Hold this,” he said to him, handing the man his cane, before removing the brakes from the bed, “MRI?” he asked the nurse,</p><p>“A right, two lefts, lift to two, follow the signs,” She replied.</p><p>“Okay,” John replied with more confidence than he felt.</p><p>“Are you taking me somewhere?” The patient in the bed finally spoke,</p><p>“I certainly hope so, Sir” John replied, grunting a little as the bars on the bed took the weight his cane usually bore,</p><p>“Am… Am I going to make it?”  The patient asked uncertainly.</p><p>Unsure whether the man had meant the MRI department or just generally, John decided that his answer would be the same either way: “Yes,” John asserted, “Absolutely.”</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Took your time,” Inspector Lestrade called by way of greeting as Sherlock stepped from the cab.</p><p>Behind him the street was crowded with uniformed police officers, tape strung around the front of the generic looking 80’s apartment block in the eerie blue glow of the police lights. It was like a scene from a bad detective show. Sherlock loved it already.</p><p>“What’s interesting about this one?” Sherlock asked, ignoring the inspector’s tone.</p><p>“What makes you think it’s interesting?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“You only call me for the weird ones,”</p><p>“Don’t take the piss Sherlock, this is only the third time I’ve called you,”</p><p>“Yes, and the previous two occasions have been interesting,” Sherlock, bored with the preamble, carried on past him toward the building,</p><p>“Believe it or not Sherlock, we are pretty good at our jobs,” Lestrade followed on behind, “We <em>can</em> handle most of what’s thrown at us...”</p><p>“But not the interesting ones…” Sherlock called back over his shoulder.</p><p>“Well,” Lestrade sighed, “Ok then, I grant you. Not the ‘interesting’ ones.”</p><p>They reached the tape. Sherlock glowered at the uniformed officer behind it, who ignored him and looked to Lestrade. Lestrade nodded solemnly, and the tape was lifted.</p><p>Sherlock ducked through without acknowledging what had just passed.</p><p>“And this one is interesting how?” Sherlock asked, heading to the lifts and jabbing at the call button.</p><p>“Usual interesting: locked room, no sign of forced entry.”</p><p>“And the victim?”</p><p>“Female, twenties, lived alone,”</p><p>The lift arrived and they stepped inside. Lestrade pressed the button for the fourth floor. They stood in awkward silence while they ascended.</p><p>“I hear you got a flat?” Lestrade asked, when the silence got the better of him. “And apparently I’m the last one to know?”</p><p>Sherlock regarded him coolly.</p><p>“And why should the fact that I’ve taken a flat be something I should tell you?”</p><p>Lestrade regarded him for a moment.</p><p>“Right.” He said, as the lift doors dinged open. “No reason.”</p><p>Sherlock’s gaze held on him for a moment, before he stepped out of the lift and headed unerringly to the one door standing open in the corridor. It was painted a deep red, the brass number 403 fixed proud and shining in the centre. Behind it the room was in perfect order.</p><p>Sherlock stopped on the threshold. Eyes darting. Three silent seconds passed.</p><p>“You’ve spoken to the cleaner?” He asked finally.</p><p>“What cleaner?” Lestrade asked, standing just behind his left shoulder,</p><p>Sherlock ignored the question and continued to study the room. Then abruptly he strode forward, completely ignoring the heap of a figure in the middle of the room, to a small business card sitting on the bedside table.</p><p>“Sherlock, you’re not wearing…” Lestrade started as he watched him reach forward, but it was too late. “…gloves.”  He trailed off.</p><p>Ignoring him, Sherlock held up his find, the single ornate letter on the front of the card glinting as he tilted it toward the light. The letter ‘M’.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>The day had only gotten longer.</p><p>The search for the MRI department had been harder than John had anticipated and once he’d managed to locate it, his leg had been killing him.</p><p>As always, with pain, came memories. The rest of the shift had been plagued with them.</p><p>He’d rounded the corner of the ward to see the face of a soldier he’d once treated, rather than a kid who’d broken his ankle in a skateboarding accident. He’d barked an order at the nurse rather than asking for assistance. He’d ducked at the sound of a car grinding gears on his laboured walk back to his tiny flat.</p><p>His head was pounding, his stride shortening. He’d thought this change of scenery would be good for him, back to medicine; the routine of patients and paperwork and not quite knowing what the next chart would have in store for him.</p><p>In the most part it was working, but occasionally he found himself missing that strange old flat on the other side of town; the smiling face of his landlady, the homely smell of baking as he’d let himself in of an evening.</p><p>The only welcome his new building afforded him at the end of the day was the impersonal reception desk and the short walk down the corridor to his deep red front door.</p><p>And the small room behind.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Mrs Hudson!” Sherlock called as he closed the front door behind him with a thump.</p><p>“Home so soon dear?” She asked, putting her head out of the door of 221A.</p><p>“It was obvious,” He said as he wiped his feet angrily on the mat.</p><p>“What was? The case?”</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock replied petulantly.</p><p>“I’m sure the police didn’t think of it that way,” She answered, placating.</p><p>He didn’t demean himself with an answer.</p><p>“Got any biscuits?” He asked instead, brightening.</p><p>She paused, coming further outside her door. “What about proper food Sherlock?”</p><p>“Hm, not interested.”</p><p>He moved to sweep past her, starting up the stairs.</p><p>“And I’m not your housekeeper…”</p><p>“Yes, you…” Sherlock paused. Noticing something. “I’ve got post?” He asked, spying the writing desk, probably for the first time.</p><p>“I don’t remember dear,” She replied distractedly, moving to go back inside, “But if there was anything I would’ve put it in its place.”</p><p>With that she’d gone and Sherlock moved to peer with more interest at the pigeonhole in the top right of the writing desk, marked simply “B”. A single sheet of paper was tucked there, no envelope.</p><p>He reached in.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Thank you for allowing me to look after your home. I’ve been very happy here.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve filed a change of address with the post office, but you know how unreliable they are, so if anything slips through could you do me a favour and forward my post? I’d appreciate it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My new address is below, thanks in advance.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>403 Layden House, Turnmill Street</em>
</p><p>
  <em>P.S. I named the skull Billy.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock contemplated the words for a few moments. Look after his home? He wondered, looking back up the stairs toward his flat. Moving boxes were still visible at the top.</p><p>Then he read the forwarding address again.</p><p>“Mrs Hudson!” Sherlock bellowed,</p><p>Footsteps and her front door opened.</p><p>“Did you see who left this here?” He asked as soon as he could see her face again.</p><p>“No dear,”</p><p>He looked down at the note.</p><p>“No one had the flat before me?” He asked</p><p>“Been empty for months.” She confirmed.</p><p>He read the address for a third time.</p><p>“John.” He said out loud, to himself.</p><p>“What was that?” Mrs Hudson asked.</p><p>“Nothing.” He replied quickly, then smiled.</p><p>Possibly, just possibly, this was less obvious than he’d first thought.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Chapter 2 </strong>
</p><p>JOHN</p><p>“15 degrees on Valentines Day, can’t be London,” Molly said as John tipped his head to catch the February sun on his face.</p><p>They were sitting in the small green space in front of St Bart’s, enjoying a moment of peace with their sandwiches away from the madness of the hospital.</p><p>“Global warming,” John agreed, turning to smile at her. Much to John’s surprise they’d become tentative friends since that first day. Her gentle smile was one that never failed to lift his mood; helping to iron out the jagged edges of his bad days and soften the memories when they threatened. She was also refreshingly forthright when it came to asking to spend time with him, which it turned out he needed.</p><p>“I like it,” She announced, bringing John back to the moment, “A lot warmer than the usual place I eat my lunch,”</p><p>“You don’t really eat sandwiches in the morgue?” John asked.</p><p>“No one complains,” She pointed out and John laughed, watching her smile spread as she realised she’d amused him.</p><p>Suddenly there was a commotion ahead of them.</p><p>A car swerved with a squeal of breaks and John’s attention was drawn to something going on in front of the hospital building. With a jolt of fear, he realised that the raised voices he could hear were being directed upwards, toward a dark figure, standing on the roof.</p><p>His first instinct was to look to Molly, verifying in her face that what he was seeing is real, not something his broken subconscious had pulled from his past to superimpose on his present. But she had seen it too, frozen in place, her mouth fallen open.</p><p>He dropped his sandwich and, clutching at his cane, rushed forward as quickly as his damned leg would allow. On leaving the little garden, he was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people, all of them staring upward.</p><p>“I’m a doctor,” He called out, moving through them, an irrational thought occurring to him that he should move closer. He could help if only he could move closer. “Let me come through,” He asked as the crowd parted slowly, “Let me come through, please.”</p><p>He had his head down when it happened. He wasn’t watching.</p><p>The whole crowd around him gasped as one.</p><p>And there was a sickening thud as the figure hit the pavement just ahead of him.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Let me get this straight,” Lestrade said, from behind his desk, addressing Sherlock who paced in front of him. “You tell me the whole thing is obvious…?”</p><p>“It was.” Sherlock passed the desk, left to right.</p><p>“Except for the card…?” Lestrade continues.</p><p>“Yes,”</p><p>“Which you found at the crime scene and just…. took?!” Lestrade accuses.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock passed the desk again, right to left. “No one else seemed to think it was important.”</p><p>“It was evidence!”</p><p>Sherlock sighed, didn’t answer.</p><p>“So ‘M’…?” Lestrade tried a different approach, looking down at the card now sitting on the desk in front of him, finally wrapped in a clear evidence bag. “Could be a company? A brand name? Looks like a business card…”</p><p>“It’s a calling card,” Sherlock interrupted.</p><p>“No one uses calling cards anymore,” Lestrade pointed out.</p><p>“Except ‘M’,”</p><p>Lestrade stared at him, blinked, decided it wasn’t worth it and continued. “You think this M is a person?</p><p>“Yes,”</p><p>“What makes you so sure?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“I’m sure,”</p><p>“You sure you’re not just finding connections where there aren’t any?” Lestrade cut in.</p><p>Sherlock shot him a wounded look and abruptly paused his pacing. Lestrade continued.</p><p>“I know you like a challenge.” Lestrade started patiently, Sherlock continued to stare. “And the case was just too easy for you…” Sherlock huffed out in annoyance, dismissing Lestrade’s words with a wave of his hand and resuming pacing. Lestrade continued, “You’re clutching at straws looking for something bigger…”</p><p>“I’ve seen it before…” Sherlock retaliated, throwing his hands around.</p><p>“Where?” Lestrade demanded.</p><p>“Previously.” Sherlock answered angrily.</p><p>Lestrade paused, considered, but didn’t push.</p><p>“So now there’s a note?” he asked instead.</p><p>“Yes, at my home. Written from someone calling themselves John,”</p><p>“That doesn’t start with M,”</p><p>“An excellent observation, Inspector,” Sherlock replied sarcastically.</p><p>Lestrade paused, took a breath. Applauded himself for his spectacular show of restraint.</p><p>“So where is the note?”</p><p>“I have it safe.”</p><p>“And what does it say?”</p><p>“Nothing of consequence,”</p><p>“Can I see it?”</p><p>“No need, the content is unimportant.”</p><p>“If it’s so unimportant,” Lestrade pronounced the word in Sherlock’s tone. “Then why send it?”</p><p>“He’s introducing himself.” Sherlock stopped, the vague hint of delight touching the corners of his mouth making him look manic, “He’s playing a game.”</p><p>Lestrade sighed.</p><p>“So you’re saying that this note from John is actually from M… the one you think is behind all this?”</p><p>“Know.” Sherlock cut in.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Not think is behind this, know is behind this. I don’t guess.”</p><p>“How could you possibly...” Lestrade started, then stopped. He was finally seeing the man in front of him. Sherlock looked wild; the expression on his face, the frustrated pacing, these strange unsubstantiated ideas.</p><p>“Sherlock…?” Lestrade asked in an entirely different tone.</p><p>Sherlock hummed, an acknowledgment of his name. Continued his pacing.</p><p>“Are you?”” Lestrade started, “You’re not…?”</p><p>“What?!” Sherlock demanded, stopping and circling back to look Lestrade in the face.</p><p>“You’re not using again are you?” Lestrade asked in a small voice, looking him dead in the eye.</p><p>Sherlock merely stared at him, eyes blazing, before dropping his shoulders in defeat and whirling that ridiculous coat as he made his retreat.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“Hey,” Molly said in greeting as she found John in his hiding place sometime later.</p><p>It had been a grind of a day.</p><p>For the most part he’d kept himself busy, allowing himself to be washed away by the tide of the work: the rounds, the paperwork, the slide show of faces: doctors, patients, nurses. But now his shift was over and instead of changing, instead of collecting his things and wishing his colleagues goodbye as he limped his quiet way from the building, instead he was sitting very still in the corner of the staff break room, concentrating hard on a dark smudge on the opposite wall and willing the memories not to come.</p><p>But he didn’t tell Molly any of that. Instead he said simply: “Hi,”</p><p>“How are you doing?” She asked simply, directly. It wasn’t a question he heard often and it wasn’t one he had a ready answer to. He grunted a little in response.</p><p>She took a seat beside him, spreading her hands very carefully on the surface of the table in front of her before she spoke.</p><p>“You fought hard for him,” She said plainly.</p><p>John’s eyes cut to her, mouth dropping open a little to ask how she knew, before he stopped. Of course she would have seen him, she worked in the morgue.</p><p>“You did everything you could.” She continued. Her calm gaze was steady on his face and John couldn’t handle the pity he read there. He shifted his eyes away.</p><p>“Yeah.” He said sarcastically, looking away. “Really knocked myself out.”</p><p>She didn’t reply.</p><p>John continued to watch the wall, aware of her gaze on the side of his face,</p><p>“Look, I know…” She started finally with a sigh, but stopped, as if unable to articulate the rest. “Believe me I know.” She breathed out.</p><p>They sat in silence for some time, both of them contemplating the ticking of the clock.</p><p>“I’ve not asked…” She said finally in a very quiet voice and John tensed, “I don’t know where you’ve been, or why you walk with that cane…” John took a breath in, “And I won’t,” She continued, and he breathed it back out. “But I just wanted you to know,” She paused again, assessing. Assessing whether or not he wanted to hear what she wanted to say. She seemed to decide. “I wanted you to know that I’m here. If you wanted to tell me any of that. Any time. And, I guess, to say. I hope there is someone. Someone out there that you can tell these things to. Someone that looks after you.”</p><p>While she spoke John had lifted his eyes slowly back to look at her.</p><p>“Tomorrow’s your day off?” She asked and he nodded slowly, once, “Perhaps it’s a good time to… If there is someone? To go see them?” She caught his eye, “For me. I’d like to know that you’ll do that. That you’ll go.”</p><p>There was a lump in the back of John’s throat as he nodded. He didn’t dare say anything back.</p><p> </p><p>The next day found him standing in front of that old familiar front door of 221 Baker Street. He’d not been able to think of anyone he could tell everything to, but what Molly had said about having someone that looked after him, that part rang true.</p><p>“John!” Mrs Hudson had thrown open the door almost the moment that he had rung the bell, the question on her face turning quickly to delight as she recognised her caller. “How wonderful to see you!” She beamed her beam of a smile. “You must come in! Come on in and tell me all about that new job of yours. Let me put the kettle on.”</p><p>John had had many things on the tip of his tongue to say about “Just being in the area,” and just “Calling by to see how you were doing.” But none of them were necessary. Instead he allowed himself to be herded inside, barely speaking a word as he followed her through to that cosy front room, the comfort blanket of her chatter immediately soothing away the dark thoughts of the days before.</p><p> </p><p>It had been exactly what he’d needed. He thought to himself some time later, stomach full of tea and freshly baked scones and the extra slice of lemon drizzle cake, since he was “looking so thin” now that she wasn’t there to look after him.</p><p>He had told her about the hospital and his new flat and his tentative new friend and she had remarked with delight and told him of the goings on in the street: the new tenants three doors down and the married ones next door, and the way the price of a cup of coffee in Speedy’s just kept going up.</p><p>It was only later, as he was leaving, that the subject of the flat upstairs was raised.</p><p>“It’s still empty,” Mrs Hudson said without preamble as she walked with him back out into the hallway.</p><p>John had quite deliberately not asked about it, he didn’t want that last connection to that brief old life of his severed completely. But she was more observant than he often gave her credit for, and she must have noticed how his eyes cut up the stairs as he approached them.</p><p>“Oh?” He asked, feigning disinterest</p><p>“Yes, I’ve been expecting him, but I’ve heard nothing.”</p><p>The previous tenant had always been “him” when Mrs Hudson had been talking about him, she’d only ever used his name once, but it wasn’t one that you would forget in a hurry.</p><p>“So it’s all…?” John asked, looking upward properly now.</p><p>“As it was,” She finished for him. She had a habit of doing that.</p><p>For a moment he considered going up, seeing all those things in the same places, but just as quickly realised it was foolish, he had no connection here really. Only the friendship of a nice old woman.</p><p>It was as he dropped his face away from the stairs that his eyes caught on the old writing desk in the hallway and he noted passively that his letter was still in the pigeonhole, unclaimed. Then something tugged at his subconscious and he looked again. Rather than the white sheet of paper he’d tucked there, this sheet was blue. He stepped forward and retrieved it. On the front, in bold looped cursive was one word: John.</p><p>John’s gaze snapped back to Mrs Hudson.</p><p>“Anything interesting dear?” She asked, mildly, “I’m not sure that there’s been any post, but I always pop it there when it comes.”</p><p>“Oh no, nothing interesting, I’m sure,” John found himself saying without really understanding why, tucking the sheet quickly into his jacket pocket. “Best be going,” He continued briskly.</p><p>Pleasantries were exchanged, well wishes given and minutes later John was safely standing outside on the pavement. He barely made it three paces from the front door before he had the letter out and was reading it.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I received your note and I’m afraid that there must be some sort of misunderstanding. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>As far as I know 221B Baker Street has been empty for several years, perhaps your note was meant for 221C? My housekeeper can become confused with the filing of the post.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>PS I am curious about the forwarding address you provided. Have you lived there long?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>He had decided to reply.</p><p>With the unsatisfactory conclusion of the conversation he’d had with Lestrade about the whole affair, Sherlock had realised that the only way to engage this John (aka M) would be to go along with the nonsense contained in the letter.</p><p>His reply also had the added advantage of being true, which meant that the mysterious correspondent could not fail to realise that Sherlock was on to him.</p><p>It was only the clumsy nature of the note that still bothered Sherlock. For it to arrive just hours after he had found the calling card made a taunting kind of sense, however that it should quote the exact address where he had found the card seemed unnecessary and grandiose. He’d added the postscript to draw attention to this.</p><p>The final step in the whole affair had been to leave the response exactly where he had received the first: tucked into the post pigeonhole of the old writing desk in the hallway of 221. Then he had retreated back to the safety, and conversely, the chaos of his flat upstairs.</p><p>“No closer to being unpacked then Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson’s voice from the doorway made him look up some time later, while he was poking haphazardly through the contents of yet another box.</p><p>She made her way carefully in to the room, setting down a tea tray on top of a second box, perched on top a third, which was in turn atop the coffee table.</p><p>“I had a case,” He said in excuse, barely glancing in her direction.</p><p>“I brought tea,” She replied, the two statements not really going together.</p><p>“Thank you,” Sherlock was too distracted to not remember his manners.</p><p>“And biscuits, just this once mind.”</p><p>“Yes, not your housekeeper,” Sherlock filled in automatically as he unwrapped another object from it’s cocoon of bubble wrap.</p><p>“You do have a lot of things,” Mrs Hudson said looking around, her gaze moving up the wall, “Is that a…”</p><p>“Bison, yes,” Sherlock’s real concentration was on the item he was unwrapping. Mrs Hudson turned back to him just as it appeared from it’s plastic prison.</p><p>“And that’s…?” She asked with the air of someone that already knows the answer but isn’t sure she wants it confirmed.</p><p>“A skull,”</p><p>He held it firmly by the back of the head, staring into the blank pits of eye sockets. He’d not realised it was still with his things, assumed it had been discarded when those thugs had boxed up his belongings all those months ago.</p><p>“Billy,” He said finally, lost in thought .</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“Back again so soon?” Mrs Hudson’s smile was just as bright when she opened the door to John the second time in one day, though it was framed a little in confusion.</p><p>“Yes, yes, sorry,” He apologised immediately, dropping his gaze and focussing for a second on the end of his cane on the pavement. “It’s just, I think I picked up some of Sherlock’s post by accident, on my way out, you see…” He was rambling, but held out the note to her in evidence, it had the word ‘Sherlock’ printed very clearly and carefully on the front. “You wouldn’t…?” He faltered, “You wouldn’t see that he gets it?”</p><p>“Of course,” She smiled and took it from him, “I’ll put it in the desk for him,”</p><p>John turned to go.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You have post,” Mrs Hudson called from the hallway downstairs. Sherlock, absorbed in sorting through his final box, took the excuse to immediately drop the task, moving instead onto the landing.</p><p>He looked down at her and motioned to the desk.</p><p>“Just a few bits,” Mrs Hudson she clarified, when she saw the expectant look in his eyes. He dropped quickly down the stairs and plucked them from the pigeonhole.</p><p>A bill, he noted as he flicked through them, an advertisement, a letter from his lawyer. Then a handwritten note, his name written clearly and carefully across the front.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m very familiar with 221C and can guarantee that I have never lived there. Call me old fashioned but I like hot running water and walls that aren’t riddled with damp.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let me try again: I wanted to thank you for giving me a place to stay these last few months. It’s allowed me the time I needed to get back on my feet. I now live at 403 Layden House, Turnmill Street. I’d appreciate it if you would forward any post if you get any.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Seemingly, Sherlock thought to himself as he finished reading the note, the mysterious M was going to keep up his charade.</p><p>He went back upstairs.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Let me provide my own guarantee that you cannot possibly reside at the address you’ve advised. I was there only last week and until recently that flat was occupied by one Stephanie Preston, who was murdered by her cleaner on the 20<sup>th</sup> February 2008.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>JOHN</p><p>“2008?” John asked himself out loud,</p><p>He was standing in the middle of the pavement on Baker Street, almost exactly a week after he’d stood there reading previously. As before, his stomach was nicely full of the tea and cake provided by Mrs Hudson and as before, he’d found a note in the pigeonhole.</p><p>What did it mean 2008?</p><p>John looked around himself, at the street, the blue sky above, the unseasonably warm weather and 2010. Very clearly 2010.</p><p>In 2008 he’d been… but he didn’t want to think about that.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Chapter 3</strong>
</p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“…quite honestly Gerrard you really must stop confirming my suspicions that the lot of you are just as incompetent as I always suspected…”</p><p>The crime scene was boring. Again. Sherlock had grown tired of it within minutes, the details so horrendously obvious that he was regretting even approaching the body. It showed weakness, he could have solved it from the doorway.</p><p>“Suspicions confirmed.” Lestrade said from behind him, his tone implying the crossing of arms. “Just do your thing.”</p><p>Sherlock turned to glare at him briefly, confirming that yes, his arms were crossed. Then he turned back to the body.</p><p>“Victim is male, mid-thirties, blunt force trauma to the head…”</p><p>“We’re not that incompetent.” Lestrade cut in.</p><p>“Just returned from a business trip to India, very successful by the looks of things. Coffee lover. Recent break up with his long-term boyfriend. Interest in ornithology. Keen gardener but hasn’t had enough time to enjoy it recently with all the bad weather we’ve been having. Left handed.” Sherlock rattled off,</p><p>“How the hell…?” Lestrade started, but Sherlock wasn’t listening. </p><p>Instead he’d seen something in the top pocket of the man’s jacket, partly obscured by his left arm. Remembering the previous scalding Sherlock swiped at a nearby discarded glove and used it to ease the card from the clothing.</p><p>As expected, it was embossed with a single gold M.</p><p>“I’m taking this.” Sherlock announced, holding up his find. He went to move past Lestrade to the door,</p><p>“No you’re not,” Lestrade blocked his path. Holding out an open, clear, evidence bag.</p><p>Sherlock dropped it inside with a roll of the eyes.  </p><p>“Speak to the ex.” Sherlock told him, continuing around him, “And ask him about the card this time…”</p><p>From the doorway Sherlock turned back, Lestrade was standing over the body scribbling furiously in his notebook.  </p><p>“And I made up the bit about the birds.” Sherlock said pettily.</p><p>He strode off.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John sat at the small dining table of his dull new flat, the pool of light from a desk lamp illuminating the contents of a shoebox spread out on the desk in front of him. He sifted through it all, searching for something.</p><p>It was only when he found what he was looking for, and had studied it for a few moments, that he pulled the blank piece of paper waiting at his elbow toward him, his pen poised.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You were right.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stephanie Preston did live at this address and she was murdered in 2008. I got that from google, I assume you did too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But that wasn’t last week. That was two years ago. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s 2010. Has been all year.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you really are when and where you seem to think you are, then you’re going to need this. I’m told there was a freak late snow that year and everyone got sick. So lots of rest, lots of fluids. Doctors orders.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock stood staring at the scarf in his hands, the one he’d pulled from the pigeonhole that morning along with another note.</p><p>He no longer knew what to think regarding his correspondent. When he’d first seen the new letter, he’d grabbed for it eagerly, expecting another taunting missive from his mysterious M; something including a veiled reference to the new case or a new intimidation tactic. Instead he’d received a bizarre reference to a future date, and, well, neckwear.</p><p>He held up the scarf to the light: blue, soft, good quality. It would go well with his coat.</p><p>He shook his head at the thought and took the letter with him up the stairs. Reading it for a second time.</p><p>Of course there wouldn’t be snow. The statistical likelihood of the London climate being mild enough for snow in March was infinitesimal. Only this morning he had considered the necessity of his heavy winter coat.</p><p>He crossed to the window and looked down at the street, still light, despite the latening hour.</p><p>He was still there when the first snowflakes started to fall.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“Another slice of cake?” Mrs Hudson asked, her tone trying for expectant, but John got the impression he was being hurried along.</p><p>“No thank you Mrs Hudson, I should probably be getting on.” John could take a hint.</p><p>“Oh, that’s a shame,” Mrs Hudson said, she was a terrible actor. “But it will give me a chance to get over and see Mrs S, she had her op a few days ago, I said I’d pop out and get her a few bits…”</p><p>She was already up and bustling about the room, collecting the tea things and organising the few items out of place. In the time it took John to rise from his seat she had tidied all trace of his visit away and was standing in her coat. Reaching for his cane, he limped beside her to the doorway, his leg stiff after sitting so long.</p><p>“Actually,” He started as she pulled the door of 221A closed behind them, hoping he was a better actor than she, “I think I left a few things behind when I moved out, would it be ok if I…” He gestured to the stairs.</p><p>“Oh yes, yes dear, absolutely...” She replied, surprised that she was being delayed further.</p><p>“But you go,” John insisted, “It might take me a few minutes to find what I’m looking for and I wouldn’t want to keep you…”</p><p>She brightened again.</p><p>“Of course,” She turned, “Just pull the door behind you when you go won’t you?” Her thoughts were already with Mrs S.</p><p>“I will,” He assured her.</p><p>“And take care of yourself,”</p><p>“I will,” John said again, the platitudes of leave-taking.</p><p>“I hope you find what you’re looking for.” She called behind her as she closed the door.</p><p>John stood alone in the hall for a full minute once she’d gone, not quite believing his stroke of luck.</p><p>For an hour he’d sat making small talk with her at her kitchen table. The trials and tribulations of the residents of Baker Street had failed to keep his attention as they had done in the week before, now that he knew a folded leaf of blue paper was waiting for him in the pigeonhole in the hallway.</p><p>He’d spied it on his way in but hadn’t had any opportunity to collect it, instead he’d hoped to take it on his way out, as had become his routine. Instead he had been granted all the time in the world to peruse it alone.</p><p>But he’d not yet stepped forward.</p><p>The whole thing was ridiculous. The last note had found him tumbling down a hole of google searches, the answers he’d found making him look around his small room with new eyes.</p><p>But somehow that previous evening, in the gloom of gathering dusk, it had all seemed a bit less beyond the realms of possibility. As if it could be true. It was that thought that had made him search out that letter from Harry, the one sent to him from that now years-old snowstorm. He’d read it a tent in Afghanistan, feeling more than thousands of miles away from the prospect of snow, unseasonal or otherwise.</p><p>And now there was a single blue note in reply.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re a doctor.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You expressed no shock regarding the circumstances of Ms Preston’s demise; you’ve seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>From your careful wording I can also surmise you didn’t witness the late snow storm personally; out of the country perhaps. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The two things together suggest one of two options: something along the lines of Doctors Without Borders, but you don’t seem the type, or military service. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Which isn’t a great leap if I pair it with your previous reference to getting back on your feet; an injury of your own.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re an army doctor, invalided home.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Staying at 221B. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In 2010?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That is impossible.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John sat down hard on the second step, his gaze shooting between the letter in his hands and the old writing desk before him.</p><p>He read the last line again. Impossible.</p><p>“My thoughts exactly,” he said out loud to the empty hallway.</p><p>Suddenly compelled he scrambled to the inside pocket of his coat, drawing out the small notebook and pen he’d brought along with him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>How can you know that?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He scrawled the note quickly and tore it from the book, standing to stuff it unceremoniously into the pigeonhole. Then he stared at it. Nothing happened.</p><p>A full minute passed in silence. The paper remained where it was.</p><p>Finally John sighed and turned away, feeling foolish.</p><p>“Stupid,” He said to himself as he took his seat on the step again. “Can’t possibly…”</p><p>But he cut himself short when he looked back to the desk to find his roughly torn-off sheet was no longer there. Instead, in its place, was a neatly folded piece of blue note paper.</p><p>John stood slowly,</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I explained my methods, and dislike repeating myself.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John read the note. Then looked around.</p><p>Then he read the note again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Is this really happening?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>This time when he had pushed the note back into the pigeonhole he turned his back on it. He stood staring at the opposite wall for as long as he could bear, before peering back over his shoulder.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>It’s impossible, but it is happening.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John read it and looked around again; at the gloom of the hallway, at the stairs he’d climbed a hundred times, at the writing desk he’d barely acknowledged until the day he’d moved out.</p><p>He opened his notebook again.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Where are you?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He pushed the note into the pigeonhole and closed his eyes.</p><p>He opened them a minute later to find the sheet he’d placed there no longer white, but blue.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>221 Baker Street. That much we have ascertained.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The more pertinent question seems to be: When am I?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John shook his head at the tone, then went back to his notebook.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>2008, so you claim.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You also claim to know I’m an injured army doctor despite my not having told you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I do know that, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Afghanistan or Iraq?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>John stopped, dumbfounded at the question. He had to take a shaky breath before opening his notebook again.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>If you’re really in 2008 then how can you know that those are the options?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I read the news,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock carefully placed his response back into the pigeonhole marked with a single letter B before turning and curling himself back onto the second step to wait, determinedly not looking.</p><p>His fingers drummed on his knee as his brain turned over the events of the morning.</p><p>This seemingly had nothing to do with M.</p><p>It had taken him a little while to adjust his thinking, the reference in the first letter being such an obvious link between this correspondent and the case he was investigating. But John had failed every test, taken every word of Sherlock’s at face value, and even offered evidence of his own: the skull, the snow. As much as it pained him to have been wrong, once you eliminated the impossible then the only thing that remained…</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Afghanistan.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The note waiting for him was brief.</p><p>Then someone knocked at the door.</p><p>Sherlock looked from the letter to the door in surprise, suddenly reminded of his location in the house.</p><p> “Is that you in the hall?” Called Mrs Hudson, sounding distracted, “Can you get the door?”</p><p>Sherlock pushed the note into his dressing gown pocket, advancing on the door in trepidation, as if it were a wild animal.</p><p>There was another knock.</p><p>Sherlock pulled the door open.</p><p>“Sherlock!” Lestrade said in surprise from the other side.</p><p>“Yes?” Sherlock asked,</p><p>“You never get the door.” Lestrade said.</p><p>“I do live here.”</p><p>“It’s usually…”</p><p>“She’s not my housekeeper,” Sherlock parroted huffily and did his best to ignore the smile that Lestrade failed to hide, “What is it now?” he asked impatiently,</p><p>“Another one.” Lestrade held up his phone. Sherlock snatched it from him.</p><p>On the screen was a picture of a picture: an old-fashioned Polaroid showing the prone body of a young woman stretched out on a burgundy carpet.</p><p>Leaning against the Polaroid was a card, one embossed with a now familiar ornate, gold M.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John returned to his little flat in Farringdon late that afternoon.</p><p>He’d paced the hallway of 221 for over half an hour after his final reply, but his note had stayed firmly in place in the pigeonhole. Nervous of Mrs Hudson’s return he’d had to leave, but not before he’d thought to slip his old key from the hook beside the door.</p><p>He considered the morning’s exchange now as he moved around in his little kitchen, putting the kettle on for tea and sniffing experimentally at the milk. He smiled to himself at the tone of the letters, shaking his head in disbelief not at the fact that this person seemed to be writing from some time in the past, but that he could know enough from John’s short lines to ask about Afghanistan.</p><p>It was only as he was crossing back across the room to his chair, his tea in one hand and some triumphantly located biscuits in the other, that he realised what he’d done that morning when he’d finally left 221.</p><p>He’d left his cane behind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for your kind support for this little story, I'm going to try and start updating it a little more often now that I have more to post.<br/>Lockdown does wonders for your word count!<br/>You can also find me on tumblr at Qalets</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chapter 4</p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Tell me you got something from the ex?” Sherlock said. They were back in Lestrade’s office at Scotland Yard.</p><p>“The ex?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“The ex, of the previous victim… The one I told you to speak to…”</p><p>“Yes,” Lestrade made a decisive gesture and flicked back through his notebook, then lifted his gaze back to Sherlock’s, “We got something from the ex,” Lestrade repeated deadpan.</p><p>Sherlock gave him a beseeching look.</p><p>“We got a confession. Eventually. What we didn’t get was any definitive answer on the card.”</p><p>Sherlock growled in frustration, rolling his eyes.</p><p>“Useless,” He muttered.</p><p>“Didn’t see you helping us out.”</p><p>“I trusted you to handle it.” Sherlock sat forward in his seat toward him. “What, exactly, did he say?”</p><p>Lestrade went back to the notebook.</p><p>“He said that it was just a card, from someone he’d met.”</p><p>“Did you ask him who? When? Where?”</p><p>“Of course I did, he said he didn’t remember.”</p><p>“Did you believe him?”</p><p>“Of course I didn’t,”</p><p>“And did you believe he killed his partner?”</p><p>“Yes, though frankly the whole thing was a bit more complicated than I would have given him credit for. No DNA evidence, no fingerprints, place had been wiped clean.”</p><p>“Say that again,” Sherlock said carefully, sitting very still.</p><p>“What?” Lestrade looked up from the notebook, “That it was wiped clean?”</p><p>“No, about it being complicated.”</p><p>“Yeah, professional job, frankly he didn’t seem the type…”</p><p>“Yes...” Sherlock cut him off, his gaze fixed on the wall above Lestrade head’s without really seeing it. His mind was elsewhere.</p><p>“What?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“I know who M is.” Sherlock’s expression widened slowly with glee. He leapt to his feet. “Of course, it makes perfect sense!”</p><p>“What does?” Lestrade asked from his seat.</p><p>“He’s a consultant!”</p><p>Lestrade looked at him as if he’d grown a second head.</p><p>“A consultant?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“Of course, that’s what has been so off about these last two cases. It wasn’t that they were boring, it was that they were too boring! These people couldn’t have pulled off these murders! Not in a way that meant they flummoxed the professionals at Scotland Yard…”</p><p>“Well I…” Lestrade cut in, almost touched.</p><p>“They had help.” Sherlock announced to him quickly, finally meeting his eye again. “A consultant. A consulting criminal.”</p><p>“A consulting criminal?” Lestrade blustered. He really did have an irritating habit of repeating the words Sherlock said back to him as if they were somehow surprising.</p><p>“That’s what I said.”</p><p>“So when someone wants to commit a crime, but doesn’t know how to go about it…?” Lestrade asked slowly as if hoping to be corrected, “They’ll just call...”</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock doesn’t comply,</p><p>“So we should be treating this as a serial killer?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“Serial killer by proxy, I suppose. Yes.”</p><p>“I know you like serial killers…” Lestrade pointed out.</p><p>“They are my area of expertise.”</p><p>Lestrade paused for a moment and considered the man in front of him.</p><p>“You seeing what isn’t there again?”</p><p>“Again?” Sherlock looked at him sharply.</p><p>“It wasn’t very long ago that you were telling me that M’s name was actually John,”</p><p>Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “I miscalculated.”</p><p>“Really?” Lestrade asked in shock,</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock sighed, “What do you find more surprising? That I was wrong or that I admitted it?”</p><p>“If I’m honest, I’m not sure,” Lestrade said, he was enjoying this, “What made you change your mind?”</p><p>“Evidence to the contrary.”</p><p>“Which you’re not willing to share?”</p><p>“No.” Sherlock replied assuredly, putting an end to the line of questioning. “The cards, it’s the cards that are the important thing: three murders, three cards.”</p><p>“Three murders, two bodies,”</p><p>“He’s upping his game. He knows the first two were barely a challenge. He’s testing us. Testing me.”</p><p>“I’m getting pressure not to consider this recent one a case Sherlock, we have no evidence.”</p><p>“Of course we have evidence, it’s right there.”</p><p>Sherlock gestures at the picture lying between them on Lestrade’s desk, printed from the phone.</p><p>“Just a photo, could’ve been taken years ago. Can’t get an ID from the back of a woman’s head.”</p><p>Sherlock’s face froze for a second in wonderment, staring hard at him.</p><p>Then he seemed to decide something,</p><p>“The blouse she’s wearing is Armani,” Sherlock started, slowly, “It’s part of their spring/summer ’08 range, pricey, exclusive. If she’s wearing it any earlier than April this year she will have had to have purchased it through their advance mail order service, only available through a personal shopper or similar.  Her hair is coloured, to within an inch of its life, and styled. She didn’t wake up that morning looking like that. She could have done it herself but more likely, judging by the exclusivity of that blouse, it was professionally done, recent to death. So if the hair is done, chances are so is the makeup, no point in perfect hair and an imperfect face. What are the only events that a woman is most likely to make that kind of effort for? Their wedding day, and that is clearly not a wedding dress, or a media appearance.” Sherlock stopped suddenly, the pace at which he was speaking having increased as he continued. “Had any tv stars go missing recently…?”</p><p>It took a moment for Lestrade to realise the final line was a question.</p><p>“No.” He replied finally.</p><p>“Look harder.”</p><p>Lestrade blinked back at him.</p><p>“Call me when you have someone I can talk to,” Sherlock said as he swept from the room.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>A bout of virulent spring flu and some bad luck meant John barely had the capacity to do anything more than get himself home and fed at the end of a shift in the weeks that followed.</p><p>It was some time therefore before he was able to test out his new (old) freedoms regarding 221 Baker Street, but choosing a time that he knew Mrs Hudson would be out (Tuesday night bingo night at the local Volunteer pub) he finally let himself back in to the murky hallway.</p><p>A letter was waiting.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I should tell you something more about myself so you can understand my questions.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My name is Sherlock Holmes and I’m a consulting detective. Only one in the world, I might add. I invented the job. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Before you ask, that means that when the police are out of their depth, which is always, they consult me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Take for example the case that I’m working on at present: a series of murders, the first being Ms Preston, whom I’ve already spoken about, and the next an inconsequential man who lost his life in an unimaginative fashion by jilting a lover. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The third case is on-going, it was brought to our attention via photograph and I’m working with, what I’m told, is the finest the Metropolitan police has to offer to identify the victim. It’s most likely a minor tv star or similar.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You don’t need to tell me what you do, I know you’re an army doctor recently returned from active duty. Since you likely took your current flat due to its location close to your new position, that part of London offering nothing else by way of entertainment or conveniences, I should ask how you’re enjoying your new role at St Bartholomew’s Hospital?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John read the letter with a smile threatening at the corners of his mouth, he replied immediately.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Thank you for the introduction but I already feel I know a lot about you. For example, you’re the kind of person who uses “whom” and thinks loss of life is “unimaginative”. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I also know you only asked the last question so you could show off about knowing where I worked. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>St Bart’s is treating me well, thank you. The days are long but the work is interesting. A friend, Mike Stamford, helped me get the job. We did our training here together, a long time ago now, and between that and other things I’ve spent quite a stretch of my life here. It’s familiar, and working here feels a bit like coming home, which was something I needed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The case you mentioned sounds a bit like the one with that Vanessa Stephens off the telly, it will have been around two years ago now. Not sure that ever got solved. If it is her then I hope you give me credit, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Your friend from the future. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“We got an ID on the victim,” Said Lestrade the moment that Sherlock picked up the phone.</p><p>“Let me guess,” Sherlock replied, he was still holding the most recent letter, “Vanessa Stephens.” He didn’t even frame it as a question</p><p>“Don’t tell me you already worked it out.” Lestrade huffed, “You need to share these things, I could arrest you for wasting police time.”</p><p>“I discovered it myself only minutes ago.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“You know my methods.”</p><p>“Damned if I do.” Lestrade grumbled.</p><p>“Have you been able to locate her?” Sherlock asked, ignoring him.</p><p>“Not yet, but I’ve got someone for us to speak to. The boyfriend,” Lestrade rattled off an address.</p><p>“Good.” Sherlock said when he’d finished, the closest he came to praise. “Meet me there in an hour.”</p><p>“An hour? You got something better to do?”</p><p>“Yes, as it happens. An hour,”</p><p>Sherlock hung up.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don’t show off.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I deduce, which allows me to know things. About people and places mainly, chains of events, consequences to actions. I find it particularly useful when solving crimes, and dealing with individuals holding a minor position in the British government.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It does mean I know a lot about the present, but I know nothing about the future. Now that I’ve decided to take you at your word; tell me about 2010.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“John!” Molly called from the corridor ahead of him, John looked up from the chart he was studying and smiled. “It feels like it’s been ages.” She said as she caught up with him.</p><p>“Probably because it has,” John replied smiling, “They sent you back to the morgue then?”</p><p>“I had my time in the sun,” She said as they turned together to start walking back the way she had come. “Seems like you’ve got it all under control up here now, no need for me.”</p><p>“Control is a loose term,” John said, handing off the chart in his hands to a waiting blonde nurse with a smile, before picking up the next. Three.</p><p>“Well it seems like you’re doing well,”</p><p>“We’re trying, two new pairs of hands and the fallout from all this…” John started, but she cut him off.</p><p>“No, not the hospital,” She smiled. “I mean you.” John met her eye properly for the first time.</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“You’ve got your smile back.”</p><p>John was taken aback by the words but realised, quite suddenly, that they were true. The last few weeks at work had been no easier, the hours no less long. But something had shifted with him. The memories had quieted, the black hours in the middle of the night shortening, not gone completely, but manageable.</p><p>“Oh?” John was aware that he was smiling, softly.</p><p>She smiled back.</p><p>“And no cane?” She asked.</p><p>“Yeah, well.” He wrapped his spare hand around the back of his neck, bashful. “My therapist always said it was psychosomatic.”</p><p>“You have a therapist?”</p><p>“Not anymore.” John replied bluntly and Molly laughed.</p><p>“Well, if you ever fancy bringing some of that sunshine down to my dark corner of the hospital, you know where I am.”</p><p>“Absolutely,”</p><p>“Tomorrow? Usual time?”</p><p>“Sounds great, I’ve not experienced sandwiches a la formaldehyde yet.”</p><p>“I clean the table!” Molly cried, punching him softly on the arm.</p><p>“Wouldn’t miss it.” He accepted with a smile,</p><p>“Great,” She turned to walk away, “And John?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.”</p><p>John laughed, watching her retreating figure and allowing his hand to steal into the pocket of his white coat, the corner of the letter crinkling under his searching fingers.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You haven’t seen or heard from Ms Stephens since Sunday evening?” Sherlock asked the man sitting across from him.</p><p>“No,” The man confirmed. He was a stocky figure, shoulders so broad he looked uncomfortable even in the wide armchair he was sitting in.</p><p>“And you haven’t reported her missing?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“No,” He confirmed.</p><p>“Lestrade, what day is it today?” Sherlock asked suddenly, turning his intense stare away from the man.</p><p>“Thursday.” Lestrade answered from somewhere in the back of the room, aware of Sherlock’s fondness of the dramatic,</p><p>Sherlock swivelled back, eyeing the man accusingly.</p><p>“Is that not a little unusual?” He asked.</p><p>“Well…”</p><p>“She lives here?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“She has no where else she might have gone in London?”</p><p>“Well, no, probably…” The man started to reply, Sherlock doesn’t let him.</p><p>“You don’t hear from her for four days and you don’t think to tell anyone?”</p><p>“Look it wasn’t…”</p><p>“Is it the first time she’s done this?”</p><p>“Well, yes…”</p><p>“Then…” Sherlock cut in, but was interrupted in turn by Lestrade, who moved forward to stand beside him.</p><p>“Sherlock, if you’re going to question the man, bloody well let him answer.”</p><p>Sherlock had left his mouth open with the interruption, he closed it again with a snap. All eyes turned to the boyfriend.</p><p>“We had a fight.” The man admitted. “She told me she couldn’t stand the sight of me, said she needed to get away for a bit.” The man looked nervously between Lestrade and Sherlock.</p><p>A pause. Lestrade looked at Sherlock, waiting for the next question, but when none was forthcoming he jumped in instead:</p><p>“What was the fight about?”</p><p>“Her job, mainly, it’s always about her job.”</p><p>“She was…?” Lestrade started to ask, but tailed off when he realised he was unsure about how to go on.</p><p>“She’d say she was a ‘personality’,” He explained. “Not just a presenter. She’s a brand.”</p><p>“And you weren’t part of that brand?” Sherlock jumped back in.</p><p>“No,” He looked away from them, back at his hands, “No, we weren’t ‘out’ in the papers yet. I wanted to be,” He added quickly, “But her people said it would be better if everyone thought she was single. She was more ‘available’ that way,”</p><p>“But she wasn’t available?” Sherlock asked in agreement, he exchanged a quick glance with Lestrade.</p><p>“Of course not, we’d been dating for almost a year.”</p><p>Sherlock’s eyebrows raised,</p><p>“That must have been tough for you, a year of never being seen out together...”</p><p>“Well yeah,” The boyfriend sighed. “It wasn’t at first, at first it was pretty ideal. No commitment, all the benefits. But then, I don’t know, I kinda wanted more… You know?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Sherlock said, the word and tone so out of character that Lestrade looked over at him properly. Sherlock was acting.</p><p>“I didn’t like what the papers were saying about her, single girl, “out on the town”, all those rumours about other guys. Her publicist,” He heaped scorn on the word, “Kept saying that it was great press, that people were talking about her. Well I listened to that talk and, well… It was awful.”</p><p>“And you didn’t like to hear people saying those things about her?” Sherlock asked, uncharacteristically sympathetic.</p><p>“Of course not! Who would? I loved her.” He paused, looked up at Sherlock. “You know?”</p><p>Sherlock stared back at him for a full ten seconds, before the bland, pleasant look fell out of his eyes all at once.</p><p>“No.” He said in answer to the question that hadn’t quite been asked.</p><p>Sherlock stood and walked away.</p><p>For a second Lestrade oscillated between the two, torn between staying and assuaging the confusion of the witness or following Sherlock to find out what he knew. The latter won out.</p><p>“What are you thinking?” Lestrade asked as he caught up with Sherlock in the hallway.</p><p>“I’m thinking that that man has all the charisma of a wet tea-towel, no wonder her people didn’t want her associated with him.”</p><p>Lestrade couldn’t help but crack a small and completely inappropriate smile, glancing back quickly over his shoulder to make sure they were far enough away from the man so they couldn’t be heard.</p><p>“What are you thinking about the case, Sherlock?”</p><p>“He knows nothing. Find out who these ‘people’ are, I’ll speak to them next.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“If you had to explain 2010 to someone, how would you do it?” John asked, a little out of the blue. Molly looked at him.</p><p>“What do you mean?” She took a bite from her sandwich before laying it back on her plate. Thankfully not resting on an examination table, but on the edge of her desk, set in a corner of the mortuary, the room around them empty.</p><p>“I mean, well…” John started haltingly, “If there was someone, someone that didn’t know what the world looked like…”</p><p>“You mean like an alien?”</p><p>“No, no, a human… Someone from the past.” John chuckled, looking down at his own lunch. “I’m not explaining myself very well,”</p><p>“You’re really not,” Molly agreed,</p><p>“I mean, if someone asked you to explain now to them, how would you do it?”</p><p>Molly thought about it, as if it weren’t a ridiculous request. John liked her for that.</p><p>“Now as in right now? Sandwiches a la formaldehyde?” She asked,</p><p>“No,” John laughed, “This year,”</p><p>“Does it have to be someone else?” She followed up thoughtfully, “I mean, am I explaining 2010 to someone else? Or could it be to myself?”</p><p>John thought about it.</p><p>“I guess…” He accepted, but she’d started almost before he’d said the words.</p><p>“Because if you asked me to explain 2010 to, say, 2005 Molly. I guess I’d tell her about my work,” She took a bite of her sandwich and thought as she chewed, “and London,” She added once she’d finished her mouthful, “And this new doctor that turned up one day with a mysterious limp.” She grinned at him, “But I think, mainly, I’d tell her that she was doing ok, you know? That she’d get there. Believe it or not I was pretty shy back then,”</p><p>John looked at her.</p><p>“I know, you wouldn’t think it now,” She laughed, but John could see that in her.</p><p>“What about you?” She asked,</p><p>“Err,” John fumbled, he shouldn’t have been so surprised by the question. “I guess…” He started.</p><p>“Don’t tell me,” She waved a hand at him to halt whatever he was about to say, “You’d tell past John all about this great new friend you’ve made that likes to hang out with dead people,”</p><p>Her eyes were wide and full of delight, John laughed.</p><p>“Yes, definitely,” He agreed. Then looked back at his sandwich,</p><p>“I’m not sure I’d choose 2005 John though, maybe 2008.” He started, as if he'd just plucked the year out of the air, “I was deployed then,” He added, justifying himself.</p><p>He paused and thought about it.</p><p>“I was probably the opposite…” He chuckled again. “Bit of a dick really.”</p><p>He tailed off, thinking about himself. About 2008. The same year that Sherlock was living.</p><p>“You still think about it?” Molly asked and John looked up at her,</p><p>“All the time,” He said softly,</p><p>“Nightmares?” She asked, quietly but boldly.</p><p>He blinked at her. Forcing himself to ignore the urge to make a joke, to back away.</p><p>“Yeah,” He breathed instead.</p><p>“But it’s getting better?”</p><p>“Yes,” He stopped. “A lot better. Just recently, I think,” He paused, unsure if he wanted to continue, “I think, well…” He started again, stopped, then: “I’ve met someone.”</p><p>“You have?” She asked, eyes wide with delight.</p><p>“Yeah, it’s…” He started to say ‘strange’, but realised the descriptor, however true, would only generate more questions, “It’s early.”</p><p>“Well, that’s fantastic news!” She laughed, “And I guess you have your answer,”</p><p>John raised his eyebrows in a question.</p><p>“About how to explain 2010: The year things got better.”</p><p>She smiled at him.</p><p> </p><p>That night, he wrote his reply.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You wanted to know about 2010?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The world is pretty much all the same, of course we all wear shiny metal jumpsuits and drive flying cars, and no one talks anymore because we can all read each other’s minds.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But we still work and come home and make dinner and make friends and go to parties and celebrate birthdays and wash our clothes and go to war and get shot.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Truth is, man from the past, not much has changed in 2010.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>London has become a new start for me: a new flat, a new job, new friends. Even a new pen pal. So as much as the world hasn’t changed since 2008, I think I have.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He quickly received a reply.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>To new beginnings. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You couldn’t have chosen better. London is a place of both great opportunity and tremendous memory. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It is also a battleground, it will play to your strengths.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You speak very highly of London, if I’m honest, I’ve not seen that yet. Except when I was staying in your flat, of course, it might have been my very favourite part of this city. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve been thinking about your flat a lot recently, not just every time I go to collect one of your letters. It’s empty now, you’re not there. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where are you? In my time?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock was standing at the floor to ceiling window on the 40<sup>th</sup> floor of a London tower block, trying his best to ignore the conversation occurring behind him.</p><p>“Vanessa Stephens?” Lestrade asked the woman on the front desk, “Your company represents her?”</p><p>“Yes,” She replied breezily, “You need to speak to Zoe.”</p><p>She offered nothing else.</p><p>“Is Zoe available?” Lestrade asked, exasperated.</p><p>Sherlock, his attention drawn despite his best efforts, turned from the window to study the bright reception around them. The office seemed to be doing everything in its power to give the impression of success: the high floor, the large windows with a view that everyone passing was far too busy or blasé to notice, the fish tank. Frankly, the fish tank seemed a little too on the nose, the creatures within it hanging disinterested half way up a glass box, separated from the world outside.</p><p>“…she’s with a client at the moment,” The receptionist was telling Lestrade as Sherlock tuned back in.</p><p>Lestrade opened his mouth to respond but was immediately distracted, as was Sherlock, by a skinny, middle-aged man in pink trousers walking very quickly towards them.</p><p>“This is ridiculous!” The man cried the moment he was in ear shot of the receptionist. Her gaze immediately sprang up to him with an edge of panic, “I cannot deal with this any longer!”</p><p>“Mr Osborne!” The receptionist’s eyes widened, her awkwardness obvious at the fact that the conversation was being overheard by Sherlock and Lestrade.</p><p>“You have to...” He started, but she wouldn’t let him finish.</p><p>“One second, Mr Osborne,” She cut in. Despite the unwavering smile on her face she gave him a look that meant that even his anger seemed to pause. “She’s free now Detective Inspector.” She said to Lestrade, enunciating his title firmly so Mr Osborne would hear, “You can go through, just on the right, her name is on the door.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Lestrade replied automatically, his eyes moving between the pair. He was as unwilling as Sherlock to leave the scene playing out between them, but seemingly had no choice. He turned the way he’d been directed, collecting Sherlock and shooting him a glance.</p><p>Zoe Clark met them at the door with a handshake.</p><p>“You’re here about Vanessa?” She asked, no-nonsense, going back to sit behind her desk and waving them to the two seats arranged in front of it.</p><p>“Yes,” Lestrade replied, taking one of them. Sherlock ignored his.</p><p>“I haven’t seen her in weeks,” Zoe said without preamble. “We had a bit of a falling out.”</p><p>“You’re not the first,” Lestrade replied.</p><p>“About her image.” Sherlock said almost at the same time, without framing it as a question.</p><p>“Yes.” Zoe replied to Sherlock, “How did you know?”</p><p>Sherlock stayed quiet.</p><p>“He does that.” Lestrade supplied, after he’d deemed enough time had passed and Sherlock was unlikely to offer anything in response. “What about her image?”</p><p>The woman sighed.</p><p>“Quite frankly, she was a bit of a slut.”</p><p>The word hung in the air. Neither man replied.</p><p>“It wasn’t something I wanted our brand being associated with. I let her go. She wasn’t selling any papers anymore, there was no reason to keep her on.”</p><p>“And when was this exactly?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“Last week, Monday”.</p><p> </p><p>Thirty minutes later Sherlock and Lestrade were back on the pavement outside the building.</p><p>“So,” Lestrade said in summation after a few moments of silence.</p><p>Sherlock wasn’t looking at him, he was standing looking up at the building they’d just left.</p><p>“So, what I’m thinking is,” Lestrade kept on, “Why did she and the boyfriend fall out about a job she no longer had?”</p><p>Sherlock continued to look upward.</p><p>“Do you know where she is?” Lestrade asked instead.</p><p>“Not yet.” Sherlock spoke finally.</p><p>“But you have theories?”</p><p>“Six, currently”</p><p>“Six?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock confirmed, preoccupied. Then he turned and walked away.</p><p>“Where are you going?” Lestrade called after him.</p><p>“Home.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>JOHN</p><p>The weekend rolled around again, and John realised through the haze of adjusting back to day shifts after a week on nights, that he hadn’t been to see Mrs Hudson in weeks.</p><p>He also knew that it was likely that there was a letter waiting for him but had told himself that it was incidental and not the main reason he’d gotten himself out of bed early on his only day off.</p><p>Mrs Hudson was pleased to see him.</p><p>“You always seem to know just when I’ve taken a cake out of the oven,” She joked as she ushered him inside.</p><p>“That, or you’re always taking cakes out of the oven,” John joked back, accepting a cup of tea and taking his usual seat at the kitchen table.</p><p>An hour later and the pot had been drained and the delicious freshly baked cake reduced to crumbs on their plates.</p><p>“I must say, you’re looking very well John,” Mrs Hudson said sitting back in her chair to look at him properly.</p><p>John smiled and ducked his head under her scrutiny.</p><p>“You know you’re the second person to say that to me recently?”</p><p>“You must be doing something right,” She smiled, standing to collect the plates and carry them over to the sink. “Though I must say,” She said back over her shoulder, “I’m not sure how you’ve found time to meet someone around all those hours you’re working.”</p><p>“Who says I’ve met someone?” John laughed, blindsided,</p><p>“You have that glow about you,” She turned back with a smile, but sensed his unease at discussing it, “No cane?” She asked instead.</p><p>“No, no cane.” He didn’t explain any further.</p><p>They paused, contemplating each other.</p><p>“Well,” She sighed, when the moment passed. “I must let you go,” It was her way of telling him that she had other things she should be doing, “I’m sure you’ll be wanting to make the most of this lovely weather,”</p><p>John, recognising his cue, stood up.</p><p>“Thank you for the hospitality as ever Mrs Hudson,” He said, moving to go past her, but at the last second gave in to the urge to lean down and give her a quick kiss on the cheek. He’d not done that before, and his embarrassment in realising that meant he couldn’t quite meet her eye as he continued to the door, “I’ll see myself out.” He continued brusquely, “Look after yourself,”</p><p>“You too John,” She called after him, before pausing and adding quickly: “And tell her hello from me!”</p><p>She was still chuckling when John pulled the door of 221A closed behind him, shaking his head.</p><p>There was a letter waiting for him. Collecting it he decided to make the most of the sunny morning and take it with him to the park. He found a vacant bench close to the water before he unfolded the page.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can’t answer your questions, I’ve not made it there yet. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Instead let me offer you something I can tell you. Let me show you the London I know. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Take a walk with me…</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John paused and looked about him, the voice of the writer so real in his mind that it was as if the man had stepped from the page and sat beside him. He scanned down the rest of the letter, smiling to himself.</p><p>“Okay Sherlock,” He said out loud, feeling more than a little foolish. But he pushed it aside and stood, dutifully going back to the words on the page and setting off in the direction it dictated, the spectre of his tour-guide walking along with him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>We’ll start at Baker Street.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He said.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Head North, past Mrs Hudson’s favourite pub (I’m told she’s legendary among the regulars for her particular luck at bingo) then into the park. This used to be Marylebone Pleasure Gardens, with attractions including boxing, dog fighting and bear-baiting. Now all it offers is grass. Don’t stay long.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Leave the park to the south and cross the busy road to Marylebone High Street, you’ll pass the site where Charles Dickens lived and where he wrote many of his novels, look for the blue plaque. On the right St Marylebone church may also be of interest; built over a vaulted crypt, people were still buried there until the 1850’s when it was bricked up. Disappointingly all the old coffins were removed in the 80’s and reburied somewhere in Surrey. Even more disappointingly the crypt is now a tearoom. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>John looked up from the page at the beautiful old church, the sign outside indeed advertising “Afternoon Tea for Two” in the old crypt. He could hear the scorn his correspondent would have heaped on the advertisement as if he were standing beside him. The urge to turn and offer him a smile in return was almost overwhelming.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Continue on, the pubs and restaurants along here are considered ‘trendy’ by those without imagination but we aren’t interested in Carluccio’s or the ‘Real Greek’, instead turn right onto Paddington Street and take Grotto Passage on your left. It’s small, so make sure you pay attention.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>On your right is the original carved name of the Grotto Ragged and Industrial School, founded in 1846 and attended by the very poorest of pupils, even by the standard of the time. Over 300,000 children likely passed beneath this sign to attend school here in the 19<sup>th</sup> century; their only opportunity to gain an education and attempt to raise themselves from life in the slums.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Having followed Sherlock to the right place John looked up at the sign carved into the stonework above a window, marvelling at how well kept it was, tucked away in this hidden place.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Soon the passage widens into Paddington Street Gardens. Hidden away and ignored by those only looking for London’s surface, it occupies the site of St George’s Burial ground. Over 80,000 people were interred here from 1731 to 1857 and the remains of the old tombs are still visible, at a polite distance from the children’s playground. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The north side of the gardens was also home to the Marylebone workhouse in the 18<sup>th</sup> century. Hard to imagine, when the garden is so peaceful now.</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>John could imagine Sherlock sitting on one of the benches and tipping his face to the sunshine as he talked.</p><p>The letter continued, pointing out a lesser-known music hall, famous for its acoustics and classical concerts, which spoke more to the interests of the writer than it informed the reader. Then a hidden garden on top of an electricity substation, it’s green foliage and pretty benches accessible only by a vertigo-inducingly steep staircase. Then the previous address of a soviet spy. All the while he walked John never felt alone, as if Sherlock lingered close beside him or somewhere up ahead; just out of sight.</p><p>He led John across Regent Street and into Soho.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Soho’s street plan has its origins in the 1670’s. The streets and squares were first favoured by the aristocracy but as they moved westwards into the newer Mayfair, they were replaced by the far more interesting, newly-arrived immigrant groups, leading to the area’s old nickname of “Petit France”. In fact the Eglise Protestante Francaise de Londres in Soho Square still conducts its services in French. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>They continued together, winding through smaller and smaller streets which were, in turns, bustling with locals and tourists, or dim, unknown, empty passageways. Each one revealed another small detail; the old sign for a long-demolished church, or the bloody history of a public house, or a blue plaque denoting a famous historical occupant. On each occasion Sherlock knew some additional detail that made the person or place more interesting.</p><p>It didn’t take long for John to realise that his facts favoured the macabre: the burial grounds, the crimes, the murders and unsolved mysteries of old.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>There is more history in each square foot of London than I could write in a thousand of these pages. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>Sherlock concluded as John reached the end of the letter, the ghost of his hand brushing against the back of John’s as they walked.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Each brick and paving stone has its story to tell. I’ll never grow tired of hearing them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Thank you, John. For letting me tell you their secrets, I’ve enjoyed seeing them again with you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>John read the final lines and looked around him, the feeling akin to resurfacing from a trance.</p><p>He was standing alone on a corner of a Soho street, the guide that had walked with him thus far having abruptly turned and left as if with the dramatic swing of a coat. Deflated, John turned a final time, back toward the tube station that would take him home.</p><p>However the moment he turned that last corner he spotted the words written on the wall opposite him. The message was large, covered at the edges with the faded remains of a thousand different pieces of graffiti, accumulated over the years, but the centre remained clear:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Afghanistan or Iraq?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John laughed out loud.</p><p>
  
</p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Where were you on Saturday?” Lestrade asked,</p><p>“I had something important to do,” Sherlock was striding toward him across the front lawn of a plain suburban house. A small gaggle of police officers were congregated outside, a few in hi-vis jackets.</p><p>“Not 100% fixated on the case?” Lestrade asked, an air of a taunt to his voice, “Not like you,”</p><p>“I do have a life away from you Geoff,”</p><p>Lestrade didn’t rise to it.</p><p>“You missed the second chat with the boyfriend.” He said instead.</p><p>“Vanessa Stephens’ boyfriend?”</p><p>“Yeah, Steve,”</p><p>“Steve Stephens?” Sherlock raised an eyebrow, playful.</p><p>“Steve Redcar. They weren’t married.” Lestrade replied deadpan.</p><p>“I assume nothing arose of consequence?”</p><p>“No consequences, no,” Lestrade quipped, “He didn’t know she’d been dropped by the publicist. Or he’s a very good liar.”</p><p>“He wasn’t a good liar,” Sherlock replied. Lestrade nodded. “Another one?” Sherlock asked, changing the subject and moving his attention back to the house in front of him.</p><p>“Yeah. Wasn’t going to call you, pretty open and shut. Suicide. But we found this,”</p><p>Lestrade held out an evidence bag to him, containing the familiar card.</p><p>Sherlock took it.</p><p>“Victim?” He asked quickly.</p><p>“Sheila Lay, forty five, lived alone. Hanging,”</p><p>“Where did you find the card?”</p><p>“In the lodger’s room.”</p><p>“She had a lodger?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He turned, scanning a small group of officers in the doorway. “Donovan!” He called, when he spotted the right figure in the crowd.</p><p>A woman peeled away from the pack, coming toward them.</p><p>“Detective Sergeant Donovan, Sherlock Holmes,” Lestrade introduced her as she got within nodding distance.</p><p>“Pleased to meet you,” She said, carefully.</p><p>“You’ve spoken to the lodger?” Sherlock asked instead, ignoring the pleasantries and leaping to the correct conclusion regarding her introduction into the conversation.</p><p>“Yeah, Mr Osborne, he wasn’t at home. Not given us the details of…”</p><p>“Osborne?” Sherlock repeated suddenly, cutting her off.</p><p>A beat of awkward silence.</p><p>“It’s a common name…” Lestrade said in answer to Sherlock’s look.</p><p>Sherlock turned back to the Sergeant.</p><p>“What did this Mr Osborne look like Detective Sergeant?” He asked.</p><p>“Short, shouty,” She replied quickly, casting around for another descriptor, “He was wearing pink trousers, if that tells you anything about him…”</p><p>Sherlock and Lestrade looked at each other.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John’s good mood lasted a few days, a feeling not dissimilar to the glow generated by a great date. But the workload at the hospital continued to be as challenging as ever and it was only Tuesday when he found his smile beginning to wear down. It didn’t help that the date coming up was a familiar one.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Thank you for showing me your city. It’s busy and it’s dirty but you clearly love it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh and I found your message. That was a nice touch. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can’t imagine how many people must have passed that wall in the last two years, wondering at the strange political statement it was making…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>While we’re on the topic, Friday will be two years since I shipped out on my second tour. It was only a short deployment, but I remember the feeling I had in the days leading up to it: like I was waiting for my life to start again. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Could you do me a favour?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I took the 9:33 out of Victoria station that morning and I left something on the platform. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>If you find it could you put it with your next letter? It would mean a lot.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>The case had gone stale.</p><p>After the excitement of the connection things had gone no further. Mr Osborne did indeed have an alibi for Sheila Lay’s time of death. He was also clueless, or a better actor than Steve Redcar, about where the calling card had come from.</p><p>Everything about the latest case pointed at suicide, and there was nothing that Sherlock could do to convince anyone otherwise. Similarly the connection to Venessa Stephens: it was obvious, important, but not strong enough to provide any kind of lead on the whereabouts of her body. And without a body, Lestrade told him firmly, it wasn’t a murder investigation.</p><p>Sherlock found, therefore, that he had all the time in the world to comply with John’s written request to be at Victoria station on Friday morning. He even managed to convince himself that filling his sudden abundance of free time was the only reason he wanted to go.</p><p>Despite his eagerness however, London did not comply that morning. Traffic meant his cab arrived at the station with only a few minutes to spare, and he was forced to push roughly through the crowds of commuters and tourists to search the board for the right departure.</p><p>But once on the platform, John wasn’t difficult to spot.</p><p>Only one small group remained waiting there, halfway along the concourse beside the idling train. One figure stood out as Sherlock moved toward them, standing in the centre of the three other men, wearing army fatigues and a bashful smile.</p><p>John wasn’t quite what Sherlock had imagined; shorter than his peers and broad shouldered, his blonde hair a contrast with his dark uniform. Sherlock gravitated closer, near enough to hear what they were saying.</p><p>“Right, well I should…” John said, gesturing to the train with one hand and wrapping the palm of the other around the back of his neck in a bashful gesture that looked like something he might do often.</p><p>“Good luck, Watson,” One of his companions said and Sherlock realised that until that moment he hadn’t known John’s last name.</p><p>“Look after yourself, ok?” Said another, a stocky man with glasses.</p><p>“We’ll write,” Said the third man dramatically, a hand on his heart in a mockery of a lovelorn sweetheart being left behind.</p><p>“Like last time you mean?.” John accused, “Just try and keep it clean,” He glared and they laughed, “Beers when I’m back?” He asked, turning to retrieve his pack from the bench behind him.</p><p>“Definitely,” The stocky one said again. “You said twelve weeks? That’ll be around my birthday, barbecue at mine?”</p><p>“If the weather holds up,” Said another.</p><p>“Perhaps you'll get a proper tan this time, Watson,” Said the third.</p><p>“You realise this isn’t a holiday?” John replied.</p><p>A murmur of laughter followed by words exchanged too low for Sherlock to hear. Much back slapping and brief, manly hugging ensued before John jumped up into the train and his three companions turned to walk away.</p><p>The train doors closed.</p><p>Glancing behind him to make sure John’s retinue were far enough away Sherlock moved forward toward the bench they’d all been crowded beside. On it was a battered old paperback, forgotten.</p><p>Sherlock studied it for a moment before bending to retrieve it. It was obviously well read, and probably well loved. When he looked back to the train it had begun to move.</p><p>Inside, John was framed clearly in the window, rifling through the side pockets of his pack, looking for something. Sherlock watched him, willing him to look up, to look at him, but the man behind the glass kept searching, unaware of his audience.</p><p>Finally, just at the point that the train was almost too far away for Sherlock to see him properly through the window, John looked up.</p><p>His eyes connected with Sherlock’s.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I have it and will keep it safe. I promise to get it back to you someday.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You probably won’t remember but we saw each other that day. You didn’t look to me like a person waiting for their life to start, it looked like you were living it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But really John, detective stories?  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>JOHN</p><p>John read the letter again as he finished his coffee. He was due to take over on the night-shift in an hour but had arrived early, his mind more on the letter than it was on his future patients.</p><p>He realised that until that moment he’d still been working on the assumption that all this was probably some kind of a hoax. He knew he was writing letters to someone, a person that existed and seemingly cared enough to do something so thoughtful for him as to plan that trip through London. But this person couldn’t possibly be living in a different time.</p><p>But now he had proof; he’d not told Sherlock what it was that he had left behind on that platform all those years ago. He’d told him nothing of the battered old book and how much the stories inside had kept his spirits up, kept him sane, as he’d passed that strange time between deployments.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You found me out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And you saw me? Or at least you think you did. Tall, dark and handsome? Wearing a uniform? </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You have the upper hand now. I still don’t know what you look like, you seem to be very adept at keeping your picture out of any google results.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John put down his pen.</p><p>He was telling the truth about the google search. He’d looked him up, of course he had, early on. He’d wanted to know the man behind the unique name. Minor news articles had appeared but none had ever included a picture, Sherlock’s involvement with any Met police inquiry was always downplayed further than the man himself would imply. It was hard to know which was telling the truth.</p><p>Since that day he’d been too busy at the hospital to do much further research and he’d not tried too hard to find the time, mainly because, as he realised now, he’d not quite believed the claim in the first place.</p><p>But if they were both in London... John thought, then he picked up his pen.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Why don’t we meet?</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He wrote. Then stopped to stare at the words on the page.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>In my time. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>He clarified.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Call me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>1st July 2010, at </em>
</p><p> </p><p>John checked his watch, then glanced at his mobile, sitting on the table in front of him.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>9:03pm</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He wrote.</p><p>Immediately the phone in front of him started to ring.</p><p>For three full seconds he stared at it, his stomach in knots, breathless with anticipation. The screen told him only that a generic mobile number was calling, it wasn’t saved in his contacts.</p><p>Finally he reached forward and answered it.</p><p>“Hello?” John said, aware of the waver in his voice.</p><p>“Hey!” Said the bright voice on the other end. “How are you doing?!” It was Mike Stamford.</p><p>John released the breath he was holding, his legs feeling like they’d turned to water beneath the table.</p><p>“I’m good, Mike, I’m good. How are you?”</p><p>He left the letter for another time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>We have contact!</p><p>London geek alert: Shout out to my guidebook collection for most of the detail of Sherlock's tour of London. Everything is completely true and it is a feasible route, that I might have spent a little too long mapping, created as a combination of three of three different guided walks. If anyone is interested in further details I'd be more than happy to talk (at length) to them about it! Let me know in the comments, or on my tumblr: Qalets.</p><p>Back to the story: for any of you that know the film you’ll know that most of the events in this chapter are lifted almost directly from the film, with a Sherlock spin to them obviously. For the time being I’m sticking very close to the film, so anyone who knows it will know that exciting things are coming in the next chapter!</p><p>Sit tight, it’s coming soon.</p><p>Thank you for all those that have offered encouragement, kudos and comments so far, they really do make all of my days. Thank you also for your very great patience with the delay to updates, hopefully these will go back to normal (i.e. around twice a week) from here on out.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Time passed.</p><p>Sherlock continued to take cases through the Met, to play his violin by the window at Baker Street. He updated his blog and started to get requests for his services directly, mainly via e-mail, most of them so easy they could be solved via e-mail too.</p><p>He didn’t see a new calling card for some time. So long in fact that Lestrade had to scold him each time he searched the crime scenes too thoroughly. Disturbing evidence. Apparently.</p><p>And he continued to get letters from a man living two years in the future.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>E-mail from a man who claims his cat is missing. Though the cat food he leaves out each evening is still being eaten.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Seems fishy to me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You were correct, cat long gone. The neighbour was feeding the food to her koi carp.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock told him about his cases, the people and the mysteries, and between them he told John of his life: his days living in London, more of what he loved of the city.</p><p>And he learnt more about John. Most of the details John told him directly, but sometimes, through the words he used or the references he made, Sherlock was able to deduce them. When Sherlock told John of these deductions, he almost always confirmed them with surprise and a pleasing amount of delight. He took joy in Sherlock’s mind, more so than most he’d ever come across. But then, John did like detective stories.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How did you know I was vegetarian?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’ve mentioned favourite places to eat in London but none include steak restaurants. Since statistically speaking a man of your age and means would count these among the top eating establishments in the city, I made a, correct, conclusion.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You do eat Fish and Chips?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I eat chips,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>And on the other side of the world, Sherlock knew, there was another John. One that did not yet know of Baker Street, or of Sherlock Holmes.</p><p>He tried not to think of that John too often, despite knowing now what he looked like. The way his uniform fit him, the brightness of his smile, the precise military shaping of his hair around his skull.</p><p>“You’re going out?” Mrs Hudson asked from the doorway.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock replied, he was standing in the middle of the room wearing his coat, aware suddenly that he was probably staring into space. “Excellent deduction.” He continued, without malice.</p><p>“You should wear that nice scarf of yours dear,” Mrs Hudson replied, “The weather is turning,”</p><p>“Yes.” He took her advice, moving past her to the coat-hooks on the landing.</p><p>“Is it a case?” Mrs Hudson asked, calling after him.</p><p>“Is what a case?” He asked.</p><p>“The reason you’re going out?”</p><p>“Oh. Yes.” He paused, “Of sorts. I’m needed at St Bart’s.”</p><p>“St Bartholomew’s? In Farringdon?” She asked, and Sherlock nodded, “What’s so special about there?”</p><p>“More than you know,” Sherlock said with a smile, taking the stairs, “But also, a body.”</p><p>“Well,” She shouldn’t really still be surprised by the things he said, “Be careful!” She called,</p><p>“I will,” He called back.</p><p>“And tell that nice Detective I said hello!”</p><p> </p><p>“Another body?” Sherlock asked expectantly as he rounded the final corner to find Lestrade waiting for him.</p><p>“Another body and another card,”</p><p>“Who told you it’s my birthday?” Sherlock beamed.</p><p>“Oh! Happy birthday,” A small voice cut in, and Sherlock was forced to acknowledge that he and Lestrade weren’t alone.</p><p>Standing beside Lestrade was a petite woman with mousy brown hair. She wore a tentative smile and a white coat, it was only the latter that meant Sherlock extended her a grudging respect.</p><p>“Sherlock, this is Doctor Molly Hooper, she’s a pathologist in the morgue here,”</p><p>The woman extended a hand to Sherlock, still wearing the shy smile. He looked at it, then at her,</p><p>“There’s a body?” He asked instead.</p><p>She blinked at him, before pulling back her hand.</p><p>“Y-yes.” Her voice wavered, then she turned and led them into the morgue. Walking ahead of them she seemed to gain in confidence as she approached the silver doors in the back of the room.</p><p>“No sign of trauma,” She said, opening a door, “Bloodwork normal.” With a surprising amount of strength she pulled the drawer inside toward them, revealing the body of a man. “I couldn’t find any cause of death at all until...” She turned over the left arm of the victim and showed them a tiny mark.</p><p>“Puncture wound.” Sherlock confirmed, bending toward it,</p><p>“Yes.” Molly confirmed.</p><p>“You found this?” He asked, with not an insignificant amount of new admiration.</p><p>“I did,”</p><p>“Do you know what he was injected with?”</p><p>“Not yet,” She said, “Something interesting…”</p><p>“Something that breaks down quickly in the system?” Sherlock suggested.</p><p>“Either that, or something that won’t show up on a standard tox report.” She replied.</p><p>Sherlocked straightened and looked at her properly.</p><p>“Good job,” He said genuinely.</p><p>She glowed a little.</p><p>“You’re looking into it?” He asked.</p><p>She nodded, “I have some ideas,”</p><p>Sherlock turned, almost knocking into Lestrade who was standing close behind him with a small smile on his face.</p><p>“Molly has it under control,” Sherlock informed him, marching toward the door and expecting him to follow.</p><p>With a nod of thanks to Molly, Lestrade did.</p><p>“Well done,” Lestrade said once they were in the corridor again.</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean,” Sherlock replied.</p><p>“Shaky start,” Lestrade continued with a smile, “But that might be the nicest I’ve ever seen you be to someone new.”</p><p>“Yes well,” Sherlock suppressed the urge to squirm, instead, he smoothed the ends of his scarf against his coat. “I’m turning over a new leaf.”</p><p>“You’ll have to tell me who to thank for that.”</p><p>“You don’t know them.”</p><p>Lestrade’s eyes widened. “But there is someone?”</p><p>“Shut up.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I visited Bart’s today. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I looked for you around every corner, despite how foolish I knew that was.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can see that you would be happy there. The facilities are acceptable and the people not incompetent.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I have a fifth victim. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Small puncture wound on the arm leads us to the conclusion of suspected poisoning, but tests are proving inadequate. Thoughts?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Calm down! You’ll do yourself an injury with all that praise.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And it is foolish, but just knowing you were here made my day.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m sorry I haven’t written for a while. My days at the moment are pretty much all work, I barely seem to leave this place. There’s a peculiar quirk of time that means a night-shift hour always lasts three times longer than a day-shift hour. Thankfully from tomorrow I’m back on days, I’m looking forward to being a normal human again.</em>
</p><p><em>I asked a colleague about those compounds. My first thought was something that would have broken down in the victim’s system between time of death and when you ran the reports but then I thought of </em>Cylidate<em>; it’s pretty hard to get hold of but it wouldn’t have shown up on any broad-spectrum 2008 test. You’d have to run a specific blood analysis.</em></p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“I want to take another look at the body.” Sherlock said in a rush as Lestrade answered the phone.</p><p>In response Lestrade sighed. “Why?”</p><p>“I know the compound that killed him.”</p><p>“Dr Hooper already found it.”</p><p>“She did?” Despite himself Sherlock was just a little impressed.</p><p>“Yeah, something called...” Lestrade was shuffling things around on his desk, the noise over the phone was unmistakable. “Cylidate. Not common, but her tests were positive.”</p><p>“You know where it came from?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“Ahead of you again. Only one known distributor in southern England. Guess who runs it?” Lestrade said with evident glee,</p><p>“Someone close to our victim,” Sherlock was already bored.</p><p>“The brother.”</p><p>“You’ve spoken to him?”</p><p>“Full confession.”</p><p>“You have been busy.” Sherlock remarked.</p><p>“We’re good at our jobs, Sherlock,” Lestrade protested</p><p>“You’ve asked him about the card?”</p><p>“Claimed no knowledge,”</p><p>“But you found the card with the victim? It was with him when he died?”</p><p>“Yes and like I said the brother claimed no knowledge. Didn’t say I believed him.”</p><p>“I want to speak to him.”</p><p>“I’m not sure I can swing that…”</p><p>“I want to speak to him.” Sherlock repeated.</p><p>Lestrade sighed.</p><p>“Get down here then.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>“Another?” Mike asked with a smile.</p><p>“Yeah,” John replied. They were sitting together at a small weathered old table outside a pub, making the most of the dying rays of the summer sun before it became too cold or dark of an evening to brave the outdoors.</p><p>John decided, as he watched Mike head back inside for the next round, that he was very pleased that he had come.</p><p>The phone call, despite its terrible timing, had been just what John needed: the re-ignition of a friendship that had slipped between the many hours they’d both been putting in at the hospital. John seemed to be continuing the habit of making friends.</p><p>“For you,” Mike set his pint in front of him.</p><p>“Thanks,” John lifted it high as Mike took his seat. “A toast.”</p><p>Mike laughed. “To what?”</p><p>“To friendship.” John replied, with a sudden burst of affection.</p><p>Inclining his head a little, Mike tapped his glass to his. “You old softie,”</p><p>“It’s been good to catch up,” John said in acknowledgement.</p><p>“Yeah,” Mike replied, “Tell you what, I’ve been meaning to say: it’s my birthday next month.”</p><p>“Oh yeah?”</p><p>“Been thinking of throwing another party. You remember that one? A few years back?”</p><p>The puzzlement in John’s eyes was suddenly replaced with acknowledgement “Yes!” he laughed at his own memory, “Yes, I do,”</p><p>“Bit of a wash out…”</p><p>“Yeah, you wanted to have a barbecue.”</p><p>“In October, foolish.”</p><p>“Worked out pretty well though.”</p><p>“You would say that.” Mike said suggestively.</p><p>“Sorry?” John asked.</p><p>“You had a good time...”</p><p>“I did?”</p><p>“Yeah, that guy. The one chatting you up in the garden.”</p><p>“I don’t…” John didn’t recall.</p><p>“You know, tall, brooding…” Mike supplied dramatically. </p><p>“Oh yeah.” It clicked, “That was nothing. That was, yeah.” He paused. “Strange.”</p><p>“You were home from leave.”</p><p>The moment Mike said it he stopped, awkwardly. It seemed to have become some unwritten rule with them that they didn’t mention the army, or anything that had come with it. Mike had just broken that rule.</p><p>They both took a drink from their pints.</p><p>“Well anyway, yeah,” Mike recovered, “I was thinking of having another party. No barbecue this time. Just some friends, at mine. Be great if you could come. Molly’ll be there.”</p><p>“And by that you’re implying?” John asked.</p><p>“Nothing.” Mike said too quickly.</p><p>“We’re just friends.” John confirmed.</p><p>“I know,” Mike smiled, “Just saying you’ll know someone else there.”</p><p>“None of the old gang going?” John asked,</p><p>“No,” Mike replied, “Not heard from them in ages.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“We kinda lost touch. After,” Mike said, perilously close to breaking the rule again.</p><p>“Oh,”</p><p>“They never came to see you...” The admission petered out.</p><p>“No.” John confirmed.</p><p>A pause. Mike steered away from the forbidden topic.</p><p>“But yeah, party. My place, you know where it is. Next Saturday.”</p><p>“Sounds good.” John replied.</p><p>
  
</p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“He is a terrible liar.” Sherlock said as they left the interview room. They were barely out of the suspect’s earshot and Lestrade glared at him.</p><p>“Told you…” Lestrade replied once they’d closed the door behind them. “Sticks to his guns though, no matter how hard I push he won’t admit to knowing anything about the card.”</p><p>“I know. I was there.”</p><p>“He folded pretty quickly on the confession front though.” Lestrade continued, ignoring Sherlock’s snark “Sounds like our vic’ was trying his best to push his brother out of the business.”</p><p>“I’m not surprised. He was driving it into the ground. He had no idea what it was he was selling.”</p><p>“He knew it well enough to use it.”</p><p>“Of course he didn’t. He had help.”</p><p>“Not that he’ll admit it.”</p><p>“He’s afraid.”</p><p>“Afraid?”</p><p>“Afraid of M. I would be, if I were him. Someone like that. They know their stuff. And they’ve killed before,”</p><p>Lestrade looked at him.</p><p>“Not directly perhaps,” Sherlock clarified. “They’re the puppeteer, the man behind the curtain….”</p><p>“Could be a woman…”</p><p>“Figure of speech.” Sherlock dismissed him with a wave of the hand.</p><p>Lestrade looked at his watch.</p><p>“Got somewhere to be?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“Yes actually.” Lestrade looked back at him. “I have plans.”</p><p>“Plans?” Sherlock asked incredulously.</p><p>“I do have a life.” Lestrade turned to walk away and Sherlock had to hurry to catch him up.</p><p>“You do?” Sherlock asked, falling into step beside him,</p><p>“I know you’re only trying to wind me up.”</p><p>“I’m genuinely interested,”</p><p>“About my plans?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p> “If you must know,” Lestrade gave in with a sigh, “I have a date,”</p><p>“A date?” Sherlock repeated the word as if it were unclean.</p><p>“Well, yeah, kinda, she’s taking me to a party,”</p><p>“A party?” Even more unclean. “Do I know her?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Lestrade laughed, “Dr Hooper, the one from the morgue.”</p><p>“And you’re going to refer to her as Dr Hooper all evening?”</p><p>“Molly then,” Lestrade acquiesced, “She’s nice. Asked if I wanted to go with her to this thing, a birthday I think. Some colleague of hers from Bart’s”</p><p>“Bart’s?” Sherlock had been losing interest in the conversation but suddenly perked up. “Do I know them? The colleague?”</p><p>“Don’t think so. Mike Stamford.”</p><p>Sherlock stopped. Mike Stamford. A birthday party. Had it been twelve weeks? </p><p>“Sherlock?” It had taken Lestrade a few seconds to realise that Sherlock was no longer walking beside him. He’d had to turn back to call out to him.</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock came back to himself, then turned on his heel, “Text me the address.”</p><p>“It’s not a case!” Lestrade called after him.</p><p>Sherlock stopped, looking back.</p><p>“I know.” He said quickly, then: “I’d like to come,” He paused, trying to look like he wasn’t begging, “If I may?”</p><p>“You really want to?” Lestrade asked, a bit surprised. Sherlock had never asked something like this of him before.</p><p>Sherlock looked expectant in reply and Lestrade relented.</p><p>“Since you asked nicely. I’ll speak to Molly.”</p><p>“Thank you,” The word pained Sherlock a little, he turned to walk away again.</p><p>“Where are you going?” Lestrade asked, calling down the corridor again to him.</p><p>“To change.” Sherlock called back, almost gone, “Text me the address.”</p><p> </p><p>Mike Stamford’s house was, on the surface, a rather unassuming brick terrace in a suburb of south west London. That was until you realised that in this suburb of south west London unassuming brick terraces sold for more than most could expect to earn in a lifetime.</p><p>“Doing well for himself?” Lestrade asked as they stepped from the cab and into the Autumn drizzle.</p><p>“I think so.” Molly replied, still giving Sherlock the side eye, “Family money too,”</p><p>“I guess it would have to be.” Lestrade replied.</p><p>Sherlock said nothing, keeping a discrete six feet behind them as they moved, at pace, to the door.</p><p>“Molly, hi!” The man that opened the front door hadn’t changed much since the last time Sherlock had seen him, a few more pounds around the middle perhaps. “And you brought friends.” Mike continued, in a slightly less bright tone.</p><p>“Yes,” Molly said cheerfully, “This is Greg,” She gestured, then quieter: “And Sherlock,”</p><p>Before Mike could comment she piled the brightly wrapped packages she was carrying into his arms.</p><p>“Happy Birthday!” She said simultaneously.</p><p>“Thank you,” He laughed, bashful in the face of such generosity, then he opened the door wider to let them through.</p><p>Inside, the house was crowded. They were led through into a large back room, which served as both dining room and kitchen, though the furniture had been pushed back to allow more room for standing. Once drinks had been offered Lestrade and Molly fell immediately into easy conversation with Mike and an attractive, age compatible woman that Sherlock assumed must be his wife. Sherlock took the opportunity to slip away.</p><p>Sticking to the edges of the room, he surveyed the small sea of faces around him carefully, moving through them without interacting.</p><p>He found him in the front sitting room. John was standing in the window, surrounded again by a small gaggle of men. It was obviously the same group as on the platform, but this time John wasn’t dressed in fatigues, instead he wore a plain t-shirt and jeans, a beer held up in front of him like a shield.</p><p>“Told you you’d get a tan, didn’t I Johnny?” One of John’s companions said, Sherlock caught only the faintest sound of it over the din of the other party goers.</p><p>“You did,” John laughed, his face carefree, either from the company or the beer, Sherlock couldn’t be sure, “You also said I’d be showing it off outside.”</p><p>“Yeah, well,” All three of them glanced up at the window beside them, streaked with rain.</p><p>“Stupid idea to have a barbecue in October,” The other said.</p><p>“Mike’s forever the optimist,” John agreed.</p><p>“I did think he was aiming a little high,” The first said,</p><p>“He always does,” Said the other, “Just look at Jenny!”</p><p>They all laughed. Sherlock, assuming the woman they referred to must be Mike’s wife, silently agreed.</p><p>The party continued and Sherlock stayed quietly on its peripheries. A drink had been offered to him as he arrived and though he’d accepted it more as a disguise than anything else, he’d found that he’d enjoyed it more than he’d expected. He sought out a second.</p><p>Later the party came together in the kitchen to sing a spectacularly painful rendition of Happy Birthday to the man of the hour. Cake was cut. Mike thanked John for being there in the embarrassing speech that followed, showing his not insignificant amount of pride at his friend.</p><p>It was some time after that that Sherlock, half way through his third beer of the evening, realised he’d not seen John in some time. He went in search.</p><p>“Don’t step on me,” It was unmistakably John’s voice in the darkness, calling out almost the moment Sherlock stepped out of the kitchen patio doors. It hadn’t taken Sherlock long to deduce John’s likely location; in contrast with the crowded party the night was quiet, the rain having passed some time before.</p><p>“I’m sorry?” Sherlock asked in confusion, ahead of him John was sitting on the edge of the decking, looking out at the garden. He’d not turned as Sherlock approached.</p><p>“If you’re coming out for a smoke, don’t step on me.” John clarified, still not turning to look at him.</p><p>“Was I likely to?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“The last guy did.” John said simply. “Guess it’s dark out here.”</p><p>“It’s not that dark.”</p><p>“It had more to do with the beer.”</p><p>“Excellent deduction.” Sherlock said gently and John finally twisted his neck to look back at him, his face screwing up against the lights of the house.</p><p>“Well, are you?” John asked, “Going to smoke?”</p><p>Sherlock moved forward so John wouldn’t have to squint at him, moving past to stand on the lawn.</p><p>“I gave up.” Sherlock said.</p><p>“Too bad.” John took a swig from his beer, prompting Sherlock to look down at his own as if remembering he was still holding it. “I was going to bum one.” John continued.</p><p>“You don’t smoke.” Sherlock said assuredly.</p><p>“And how would you know?”</p><p>“You don’t seem the type.”</p><p>They paused, contemplating each other.</p><p>“I could be,” John said.</p><p>“But you’re not.”</p><p>“You don’t know me.” John mumbled testily, breaking eye contact.</p><p>“I know you’ve just returned from Afghanistan.”</p><p>“You and everyone else here,” John said, referring to Mike’s speech.</p><p>“I know you don’t like to talk about it.” Sherlock followed up.</p><p>John looked at him again and Sherlock knew he’d do anything to keep him looking in his direction.</p><p>“And I know that’s why you’re out here.” Sherlock said gently. “And not in there.” He motioned back to the party without breaking eye contact.</p><p>They looked at each other for a long time. John hummed a little in acknowledgement but didn’t say anything, he moved his gaze away again.</p><p>“You’re glad to be home?” Sherlock asked when the silence stretched longer than even he was comfortable with.</p><p>“In some ways.” John took another swig. “I miss beer.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And the guys I guess.”</p><p>“No one…?” Sherlock started to ask, then stopped, causing John to look back at him questioningly “…else?” Sherlock finished lamely, surprised at his own question.</p><p>“Are you asking me if I have a girlfriend?” John asked,</p><p>“I guess I am.”</p><p>John considered him, “No.” He answered finally. “No girlfriend.”</p><p>“Right. That’s ok then.” Sherlock bumbled. “All fine.”</p><p>“Of course it’s fine.”</p><p>It was something Sherlock had never asked in his letters. Somehow it had always felt, well, silly. Sherlock took another drink.</p><p>“You’re going back?” Sherlock asked. Where were these questions coming from?</p><p>“Yes.” John answered without hesitation,</p><p>“When?”</p><p>“Not that it’s any of your business, but December.” John paused, “Probably.”</p><p>“Christmas?”</p><p>“Lot of the guys want to be back with their families…”</p><p>“And you have no family...?”</p><p>“Pretty personal question.” John stopped him.</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock wavered. “Sorry.”</p><p>A weighted pause. Sherlock decided that this wasn’t going very well.</p><p>“A sister.” John said finally. “We aren’t very close.”</p><p>Sherlock didn’t reply.</p><p>“The guys have always felt like family, you know?” John said as if justifying himself. He gestured vaguely back to the party, “We were in med school together.”</p><p>“You’re a doctor?” Sherlock feigned surprise.</p><p>“Yeah, medical corps.”</p><p>“You like it?”</p><p>“Very much,”</p><p>“What made you decide to…” Sherlock started, wavered, decided to go on, inarticulately, “Doctor, out there?”</p><p>“You mean why not in London?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Because London is awful.” John answered with a not inconsiderable amount of venom. For a second Sherlock was truly surprised. “It’s busy and it’s dirty and no one cares about anyone else. Plus you can only really get medical jobs if you already know someone working there…”</p><p>“I care.” Sherlock found himself saying, but John was still talking.</p><p>“What was that?”</p><p>“Nothing.” Sherlock lost his nerve, “Your friends are here…?”</p><p>“Yeah, there’s that.” He paused, “Still can’t afford to live here though,”</p><p>“I guess not,”</p><p>“We can’t all have family money,” John gestured back at the house,</p><p>“No.” Sherlock agreed.</p><p>“That was why I joined up, at first,” John said slowly, “The money. We didn’t have a lot growing up, I had no way of supporting myself, so it made sense. They put me through medical school.” He was studying his beer bottle as he talked in a manner that implied he was revealing more than he was comfortable maintaining eye contact for, “Now I know it wasn’t just a means to an end, it suits me.”</p><p>“How so?”</p><p>“Not sure I could be sitting in a quiet job in a little hospital in London. Not when there are people in the world that need me like they do out there.”</p><p>“You like to be needed?”</p><p>“Don’t we all?” He asked.</p><p>Sherlock swallowed, “You could be needed here,”</p><p>John met his gaze for a few seconds, reading the meaning he put there, before cutting his eyes away.</p><p>“Not like out there. You’re part of something there,”</p><p>“You’re not part of something here?”</p><p>“No.” John took another swig, “Here… I guess it feels a little like everything is gradually passing me by. Everyone seems so happy with their lots: little jobs, little lives, little families, little friends. I can’t understand it. I mean imagine! A pretty house in the ‘burbs with 2.4 kids and a wife who works in finance!” John barked a laugh, “I couldn’t do it. Honestly. I don’t know what I’d do if they decided they didn’t want me out there anymore.” A pause, “Go quietly insane probably.”</p><p>“You’re stronger than you think,”</p><p>“You can’t possibly know that.” John looked at him.</p><p>Sherlock hummed a response, holding his gaze for as long as he could before John became uncomfortable and looked away.</p><p>“You like it then? London?” John asked, clearing his throat of the confessions he’d made.</p><p>“Lived here all my life.” Sherlock said, not quite answering the question, then, wanting to provide some confessions of his own: “Except for that short spell in rehab.”</p><p>John looked back suddenly. “Really?”</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock answered simply. “Clean now.” He raised his beer bottle back to his mouth and they both looked at it. “It wasn’t booze.” Sherlock clarified,</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>Sherlock could tell he wanted to ask but John surprised him by not doing so.</p><p>“How do you know Mike?” John asked instead after a few seconds of silence, as if he’d realised he was part of a conversation and might as well settle into it.</p><p>“I don’t.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Not really.” Sherlock considered not clarifying but realised that if he didn’t the conversation would be over. “Friend of a friend.”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“They work at Bart’s,” Sherlock prevaricated.</p><p>“You’re a doctor?”</p><p>“No, I’m with the police.”</p><p>“You’re a police officer?”</p><p>“No…” Sherlock started uncertainly, but was saved by the sudden appearance of Mike, who pushed his head through the opened door.</p><p>“You guys ok out there?” Mike asked, looking between them,</p><p>“Yes thanks,” John turned back to his friend and raised his beer in acknowledgement, “Doing OK,”</p><p>“We’ve been looking for you,” Mike said pointedly to John,</p><p>“I’ll be right there.”</p><p>Mike shot him a meaningful look, holding his gaze for longer than was strictly necessary, then retreated.</p><p>John stood up from the edge of the decking, turning to face Sherlock,</p><p>“I should…” He said,</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock nodded.</p><p>John turned to leave and Sherlock changed his mind.</p><p>“Perhaps,” He started in a rush, and John stopped, “Perhaps I could, try and change your mind, about London?” Sherlock continued haltingly.</p><p>John considered him. “You’re asking me out?”</p><p>“No,” Sherlock said immediately, an automatic denial, “Just...”</p><p>But John cut him off, “I’m going back,” He said, referring to Afghanistan, “In a month, just over…”</p><p>“Yes, I know, I was just…”</p><p>“And I’m not really looking…” John talked over him again.</p><p>“Yes…” Sherlock’s turn.</p><p>“So no,” John said, halting their fumbled exchange. “But thanks.”</p><p>Sherlock nodded.</p><p>“And I’m not gay,” John added, almost as an afterthought.</p><p>“No.” Sherlock looked away, “Of course. No. Sorry,” He didn’t know what he’s doing.</p><p>“But it was nice to meet you,” John stepped forward towards him, hand outstretched.</p><p>Sherlock took it. “Yes, it’s good to meet you too.”</p><p>Their gaze locked as their hands touched and they stood, just a little too long, palm to palm.</p><p>“John?” Mike’s voice behind them snapped them back to reality and immediately John let go.</p><p>“Yes,” John called back, stepping away, clearly flustered. His hand coming up to the back of his neck again, gaze roaming; the sky, the ground, his feet, “I should…” He said to Sherlock.</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock on the other hand, couldn’t look away.</p><p>John turned and went back inside.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Of course it was you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It feels like such a long time ago now. It was... I don’t know how to describe it. It was strange, that night. But I thought about you, afterwards. I thought about you a lot, an embarrassing amount really. Mike’s friend. The one who managed to ask me out without even sounding like you liked me. I was just someone who got in the way of your cigarette.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>…but you weren’t even smoking were you? That wasn’t it at all. Were you looking for me?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Of course you were. I would have. If the roles had been reversed. I would have looked for you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. </em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>(Later)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m sorry. I wasn’t making too much sense earlier. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I needed a bit of time to think about it. But I’ve done that now and I think I know what I want to say: I’m glad I didn’t know it was you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>That guy you met in the garden wasn’t the same person I am now. He had a bit more growing up to do. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I think I needed you to meet me now, not then. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>So this might be strange, and impossible. But I’m glad it’s now. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>It took John a full week and an embarrassing amount of aborted drafts to finish the reply. From the moment he’d been reminded of that strange encounter from all those years before, there had been something niggling at John’s subconscious. The whole experience had been too weird, to incongruous with everything else in his life.</p><p>It might have taken John a long time to write his letter, but Sherlock’s reply was immediate:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>You thought of me?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Of course I did. I’d not been picked up by a bloke before. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Even if you did do a really bad job of it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>You’ve been picked up by a bloke since?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I’m not going to answer that…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Your implications are intriguing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I’m implying nothing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But seriously, life carried on as normal after I met you: drinks with the guys, nights in London, then training and prep. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>My final tour (something I know now, but didn't then) was supposed to be six months, but I extended it, right before I was due back. I wasn’t ready to come home, I hated the idea of coming back and not knowing who I was any more.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I got a 12 week extension but I barely made it through half. I was home in July. Spent almost all of that month in hospital. St Bart’s obviously. How do you think I got this job?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Not sure why I’m telling you all this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Because I want to hear it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John folded the reply, standing from the now familiar step in the hallway of 221 Baker Street to take his leave. He’d been sitting there so long his leg was stiff; a strange echo of an injury he’d never quite had.</p><p>John walked the length of the hallway and let himself out into the street, the jolly Christmas lights strung beneath the lampposts casting red pools on the pavement as he walked.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Next up... Christmas. In May.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SHERLOCK</p><p>On principle, Sherlock did not enjoy Christmas. It was probably something to do with it being the time of goodwill and jolly Christmas lights, and the fact that all serial killers seemed to take the opportunity to have a festive break.</p><p>It had been a week since his last call from Lestrade, and a lot longer than that since it had been regarding anything interesting.</p><p>“Any more mince pies?” Sherlock asked, as he was forced from his flat in the face of his boredom to see if Mrs Hudson might have the answers to keeping him entertained.</p><p>“You finished them all, dear,” Mrs Hudson didn’t look up from her magazine as he casually wandered into her living room.</p><p>“You didn’t make any more?”</p><p>“Not yet, dear.”</p><p>She always over-used her terms of endearment when she was losing her patience with him.</p><p>Sherlock halted in the centre of the room, unsure about what else to do.</p><p>“Is there anyone else you could be bothering, dear?” Mrs Hudson asked, turning the page of her magazine.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“That nice policeman perhaps?”</p><p>“Detective.” Sherlock corrected, “No cases,”</p><p>“Well, where else might you find some?” She asked.</p><p>Sherlock thought, then smiled.</p><p>“Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” He swept from the room.</p><p> </p><p>“Good evening Molly,” Sherlock said in his most cordial of tones as he entered the morgue, “I’m told you’ve something new for me?”</p><p>Molly, sitting behind a desk at one end of the room, looked up at him in surprise.</p><p>“N-no.” She stammered uncertainly.</p><p>“Oh.” Sherlock stopped, that had been the extent of his plan.</p><p>“I mean,” She stood and moved around the desk toward him. “Well, we’ve had a few… But n-nothing Greg’s been involved with…” She continued, clearly believing she was the one that was mistaken.</p><p>“Anything interesting?” Asked Sherlock.</p><p>“No, I…” She started to explain again. Then stopped, turning slowly to narrow her eyes at him. “Greg hasn’t sent you has he?”</p><p>“Um,”</p><p>“He would have warned me.”</p><p>“Warned you?” Sherlock asked, a little hurt.</p><p>“Yes, warned me.” She crossed her arms, clearly she was trying to look more intimidating than her stature allowed, “You’re bored?”</p><p>“No.” He denied quickly.</p><p>“He told me you’d probably do this at some point.”</p><p>“Do what?”</p><p>“Come to me for cases when he wasn’t able to give you any.”</p><p>“That’s not what I’m doing at all…”</p><p>“Then what is it you’re doing?”</p><p>“I merely came by to…” he paused, “See if there was anything I could help with.”</p><p>She surveyed him, clearly not believing a word.</p><p>“There’s nothing.” She said finally, “We’re winding down. Christmas do is starting in 15 minutes.”</p><p>“’Do’?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“Yes, party, starts at six,”</p><p>“It does?”</p><p>“Yes,” She stood up, making a shooing motion with her hands. “And I need to change, so you need to leave.”</p><p>“I could stay?” Sherlock suggested, without quite engaging his brain.</p><p>Molly’s eyes widened in surprise, a small flush touching the apples of her cheeks.</p><p>“What?” Sherlock asked, “Oh. No. That’s not what I meant. I meant stay for the party. Not for the…” He waved his hands, “The changing.”</p><p>“You do seem to like inviting yourself to things.” She pointed out.</p><p>“I’ve been in the mood for socialising lately.”</p><p>“You didn’t seem to do a lot of it at the last party,” Molly pointed out, “Just lurked in the shadows and disappeared home without saying goodbye.”</p><p>“Yes well.” Sherlock scoffed. “I didn’t say I was any good at it.” He smiled at her, wanly.</p><p>She considered him.</p><p>“You’re sure you want to come?” She asked,</p><p>“George will be there?” He countered.</p><p>“George?” She asked, he simply looked back at her, realisation dawned. “Oh yes, Greg will be there,”</p><p>“You’re still…?” Sherlock asked, wondering quite why he cared.</p><p>“We’ve seen each other a few times.” Molly seemed to know what he was getting at without him having to complete his sentence,</p><p>“My condolences.” He said seriously, which made her smile.</p><p>“Six o’clock, staff room,” She waved him to the door, “I’ll see you there.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“Starts at six!” Molly called out to him from further along the corridor ahead of him.</p><p>“What does?” John asked, head buried in the chart he was holding,</p><p>“The Christmas do,” Molly replied, catching up and giving him a playful bat on the arm. “Staff room, six o’clock, you brought your party frock?”</p><p>“Left it at home.” John dead-panned, still preoccupied. “Have you seen the results for the patient in 328?” He asked instead.</p><p>“No, why? Is he dead?” She asked brightly.</p><p>He looked up, then he seemingly realised who he was talking to and cast about them, catching the attention of a passing nurse instead.</p><p>“Patient in 328…” He started to say.</p><p>“Lab is backed up,” She cut him off, knowing what he would ask. “Everyone’s getting ready for the party.”</p><p>“Party?” He asked the nurse.</p><p>Molly huffed loudly behind him.</p><p>“That’s tonight?” John asked, looking between them both.</p><p>“Yes!” Molly cried at the same time the nurse said,</p><p>“Absolutely,”</p><p>“I… wow,” John foundered, “I’d forgotten.”</p><p>“Obviously,” Molly laughed, as John shook his head.</p><p>“I should…” He started,</p><p>“Go get ready?” Molly supplied when he didn’t finish the sentence.</p><p>“Yes, well, go sort these patients…”</p><p>“And I’ll see you there Dr Watson?” The nurse, who was still standing with them, asked with a smile,</p><p>“Yes, of course…” He started and then got stuck, aware that although her face was familiar, he had no idea of her name.</p><p>She left him hanging for a few moments, watching his confusion before smiling and offering simply:</p><p>“Mary,”</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>The only thing that stood in the way of Sherlock attending the party was the fact that he had no idea where the staff room was. He was forced to seek help.</p><p>“You’re attending the staff Christmas party?” He asked a figure moving towards him in the hallway. Judging by the confident way she was navigating the baffling topography of the building she clearly worked there, but her attire was not that of a medical professional. Instead it could only be, what could be described as, festive.</p><p>“Yes?” She asked, wary.</p><p>“Could you tell me how to find the staffroom?” Sherlock asked, inwardly applauding his own decision about which person to approach. She had a friendly face, made only friendlier by the Christmas baubles hanging from each ear, sparkling against her meticulously styled blonde hair.  </p><p>“And you are?” She was smiling, but understandably cautious.</p><p>“Sherlock Holmes, friend of Dr Hooper.” He almost held out a hand, then at the last moment decided against it. “And Dr Stamford.” He added, to help matters.</p><p>“Mary Morstan,” Her smile broadened as she decided to trust him, “Any friend of theirs is a friend of mine. This way,”</p><p>They fell into step together.</p><p> </p><p>“Making friends?” Molly sidled up to him the moment he finally made it to the staff room, he looked at her in surprise, then back to the retreating figure of Mary, then back at Molly; she’d put on lipstick.</p><p>“She was kind enough to show me the way.” Sherlock replied, deciding not to comment on it.</p><p>“You got lost?”</p><p>“No.” He replied, too quickly.</p><p>“I believe you,” Molly joked, “Let me get you a drink.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“John! Let me get you a drink,” Molly greeted him the moment he stepped through the door. She had made an effort, he noticed, in the thirty minutes since he’d last seen her she’d managed a full change of outfit, hairstyle and makeup.</p><p>“Thanks,” He followed her to the ‘bar’, which, in reality, was just the same old kitchen countertop where they’d usually brew tea, now overflowing with various different containers of alcoholic beverages.</p><p>“Beer? Wine? Punch?” She asked.</p><p>“Punch?” John ventured,</p><p>“You’re a braver man than me…” She turned to reach for it.</p><p>“Beer then,” He changed his mind and she laughed, handing him an open bottle.</p><p>“Quite the turnout,” John said as they turned back to survey the room.</p><p>“Free booze,” Molly replied sagely.</p><p>“I like your…” John said moving his hands in a vague gesture around his body in an effort to signal the tinsel that was currently wound around her neck,</p><p>“Thanks,” She laughed, “Got some more around here if you’d like it?”</p><p>“No thanks,”</p><p>“Doesn’t go with your frock?”</p><p>“No,” John laughed. He wasn’t wearing a frock. Just the normal jeans and jumper he’d worn into work that morning.</p><p>“What should I be expecting from this thing then?” John asked after a slightly awkward pause. Molly turned a questioning glance on him, “It’s my first. Are we talking drunkenness and debauchery? Or awkward conversations with consultants about the dangers of hospital acquired septicaemia?”</p><p>“Somewhere in the middle.” She replied firmly, sipping her wine.</p><p>“The middle?”</p><p>“Yeah: talking about septicaemia, while drunk and debauched.”</p><p>“I look forward to it,” He laughed, raising his beer to her in a toast.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Do you know anyone here?” Molly asked once Sherlock had a drink in his hand. He’d considered the punch but had decided the garish colour didn’t bode well for its chances of being palatable. He’d opted for beer instead.</p><p>“You, Mary over there,” Sherlock replied, nodding in her direction, they were stood with their backs to the makeshift bar, surveying the room of partygoers. “And Griff, if he shows.”</p><p>“You do that on purpose,”</p><p>“I don’t know what you mean,” Sherlock smiled and glanced at her sideways.</p><p>She smiled back.</p><p>“What should I be expecting of this evening then?” He asked as he grew uncomfortable with the eye contact.</p><p>“I’m not sure, it’s my first one.” Molly replied.</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“I only started last year,” She didn’t go on.</p><p>Just as Sherlock felt he probably should be asking her something about her life, perhaps about her previous role or where she had trained, or myriad other questions that less socially-inept individuals might offer without even a moment’s hesitation, Lestrade appeared.  </p><p>“Whotcha,” He offered in greeting, coming up behind Molly and kissing her quickly on the cheek.</p><p>She blushed, rather endearingly, and Lestrade smiled to see that he’d done that to her. Before turning to Sherlock.</p><p>“What are you doing here?” He asked bluntly.</p><p>Molly hit him gently on the arm,</p><p>“Molly invited me.” Sherlock offered in reply.</p><p>“And you accepted?” Lestrade asked, incredulous.</p><p>“Yes. I can do festive. When asked.”</p><p>“I’ll believe it when I see it,”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“…the main considerations really must be maintaining the highest standards of hygiene.” The consultant was telling John in a manner that resembled more a lecture than a conversation, John was nodding along. “If there are not…” The consultant continued.</p><p>“Dr Watson?” There was a voice over John’s shoulder, and he could have cried in gratitude for the interruption.</p><p>“Yes?” John asked the intruder with a small ‘What can you do?’ look at the consultant, “Is everything ok?” He followed up quickly, hoping the answer was no, even if that meant potential loss of life.</p><p>“I wondered…” It was Mary from earlier, here to save him, “Would you be able to…?” She started to ask, motioning over her shoulder back the way she had come. John didn’t allow her to finish,</p><p>“Of course, yes,” He said too quickly, motioning for her to lead the way. “Sorry, I should…” He said back to the consultant, with another vague hand gesture.</p><p>“Yes,” The man agreed, clearly confused.</p><p>They escaped.</p><p>John followed her through the room of people and all the way out the door,</p><p>“Oh god, thank you,” He stopped, laughing, once they were in the corridor. She offered him a bright smile in response.</p><p>“Wait. There’s not, actually…” He started.</p><p>“No, no, nothing wrong.” She laughed, “You just looked like you needed saving,”</p><p>“I really did, thank you,” John huffed out a laugh, “Honestly, Molly told me what to expect but I never really…” He tailed off, unsure how to explain.</p><p>“Are you and she…?” Mary asked, on Molly’s name being raised.</p><p>“Are we…?” John asked.</p><p>“I mean, I see you together a lot… I thought that perhaps…” Mary continued.</p><p>“Oh!” John cottoned on, “You thought we were a couple? No, no, just friends.”</p><p>“Right,” Her gentle smile suggested she was quite pleased with that answer. “So is there anyone…?” She started to ask.</p><p>John suddenly felt a little out of his depth, completely unsure how to answer.</p><p>“Well, not exactly.” He floundered, Mary’s eyebrows went up. “Not right now, but…” He started to say more, but she cut him off.</p><p>“A mystery,” She smiled, “I like that,”</p><p>He smiled back at her, unsure.</p><p>“You don’t remember me, do you?” She asked then completely out of the blue.</p><p>John blinked at her, taken aback.</p><p>“Should I?” he asked,</p><p>She looked back at him expectantly.</p><p>“From around the hospital?” He ventured.</p><p>“No,” She started, but changed her mind, “Well yes, but not what I mean.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“I was there,” She said, “When you were injured.”</p><p>“You… were? What?” John asked inarticulately.</p><p>The conversation had abruptly taken a turn he couldn’t handle: from the calm of the hospital corridor to the battleground in the blink of an eye. His mind was immediately back on the field; the sand, the shouts, the blood, as vivid as any of the flashbacks he’d had when he’d first started working there. He had to shake his head to clear it.</p><p>She was watching him calmly as if he knew what was happening behind his eyes.</p><p>“When they brought you here,” She said slowly, to counteract it. “I was your nurse,”</p><p>They contemplated each other in the quiet of the hallway for a few moments, their eyes locked. John didn’t know what to say.</p><p>Then someone pushed through the door beside them, the noise of the party heightening for a second and bringing them out of it.</p><p>“Right,” John was looking quickly between her eyes, “I thought I…” He started, wavered, “I mean I thought I recognised you, but I wasn’t sure…”</p><p>“You were pretty out of it.”</p><p>“Yeah,”</p><p>“I shouldn’t’ve brought it up,” She said, awkward.</p><p>“No, no, I’m glad you did. Thank you.”</p><p>The air was thick all of a sudden, through it, she smiled at him. He couldn’t look away.</p><p>“Thank you,” He repeated softly, “For being my nurse. And for telling me.” He was aware that things were rising up that he couldn’t handle, he coughed to cover it. “Can I get you a drink?”</p><p>“Sure,” She beamed.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock was standing just outside the door of the staff room, contemplating a cigarette and wondering why he’d decided that today was the day he was going to try and be sociable.</p><p>“You lasted half an hour longer than I expected you would,” Lestrade said, appearing through the door beside him,</p><p>“Too much tinsel.” Sherlock replied grouchily.</p><p>“You don’t need to make excuses,” Lestrade said, leaning beside him. Sherlock shot him a look. “It’s not your thing, you don’t need to apologise.” Lestrade continued.</p><p>“I wasn’t,”</p><p>“No,” Lestrade agreed with an annoyingly knowing smile. “What made you decide to come?”</p><p>“I was looking for someone.”</p><p>“Find them?”</p><p>“No,” Sherlock said quickly, then: “They’re not here yet.”</p><p>“Oh, so that’s why you stayed? They’re running behind?”</p><p>“No. I am,”</p><p>Lestrade looked at him in confusion but Sherlock offered no explanation.</p><p>“Merry Christmas Gideon,” He said instead, pushing himself away from the wall and walking away.</p><p>“I know you know my name!” Lestrade called after him.</p><p>Sherlock didn’t allow him to see his smile.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Christmas is hateful. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>People insist on being jolly as if it were an actual sentiment, rather than an adjective to describe a fictional fat man.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve also never understood the purpose or necessity of tinsel. It exists only to shed, or to line the bottoms of January dustbins, along with the corpses of fir trees. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I narrowly escaped such a fate myself after attending the St Bart’s Christmas “Shindig”: cheap drinks, cheaper doctors, I’m not sure why I bothered. Thirty minutes was enough to inoculate me against the joys of the season.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bah Humbug.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I wish I’d been there too.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I bet you scowled at the punch and refused to wear anything with even the slightest suggestion of festive cheer.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I was at the same party, just in the wrong year.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Happy 2009 Sherlock. May it bring you everything you could ever want,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Happy 2011 John. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want to meet you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>dun, dun, dun....</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>JOHN</p><p>John was sitting in the dim hallway of 221, perched on the second step of the staircase that led up to his (Sherlock’s) old flat. In his lap was the most recent note.</p><p>It had been cold when he set out that morning, the world holding its breath for the possibility of snow. It was that dark time of year in the come down after Christmas, when the world realises that winter isn’t all twinkling lights and jollity, but biting cold, grey skies and long nights.</p><p>He’d needed some friendly words, a glimmer of brightness in the mizzle. Instead he’d received a request.</p><p>He scribbled a hasty reply:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>We already met.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It took roughly twenty cold minutes before the note was replaced.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Properly this time.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Pick a place, I’ll be there.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tomorrow.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John was aware his hand was shaking as he refolded the letter and started his reply:</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>It won’t be tomorrow for you. You’ll have to wait two years.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The response appeared in exactly the time it took John to pace the length of the hallway and back, as if his correspondent were doing the same.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I don’t care. I’ll wait,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I am.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve booked us a table: Angelo’s. Frith Street. 7pm.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The owner owes me a favour. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>You’re sure he’ll still be open in two years?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Certain, he has friends in high places.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>See you tomorrow,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>See you in two years,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock had been right, Angelo’s was still there, a shining beacon of warm light on the cold Soho street. As much as he wouldn’t admit it John’s hands were trembling when he pulled open the door the next evening.</p><p>He was met by an almost embarrassingly enthusiastic man with a dark beard.</p><p>“John?” The man, presumably Angelo, asked immediately.</p><p>“Yes,” John stammered a little in response,</p><p>“We’ve been waiting for you,” Angelo replied, beaming.</p><p>“You have?”</p><p>“Of course!” Angelo waved John forward and motioned to the table in the window. “When my good friend Sherlock makes a reservation two years in advance, it’s a date you remember.”</p><p>“I’m not sure…” John started, sitting, then found himself derailed when a menu was waved in front of his face, “I’m not sure that it is. A date.”</p><p>“A well planned one!” The man fussed with the place settings. “Tell me: why the wait?”</p><p>“You mean why the two years?”</p><p>“Yes!” Angelo cried, eager for details. John realised he’d had years to wonder.</p><p>“Just…” John started, then realised he couldn’t possibly explain, “A special day, for us, I guess.”</p><p>“And how is Sherlock?” Angelo asked expectantly.</p><p>“He’s good, thanks, I think,” John replied absently, glancing at his menu. “You’ll be able to ask him yourself,” John continued, “Soon,”</p><p>His own words made his heart lurch in his chest. Was this really happening?</p><p>“I look forward to it,” Angelo was unaware of John’s anxiety, “What can I get you to drink?” He asked then jumped back in before John could reply. “Let me get a candle for the table; more romantic,”</p><p>John was left alone to contemplate the absolute impossibility of his current situation.</p><p>Was this a date? John asked himself. Of course it was. He was on a date. With a man. A man from the future.</p><p>A man who was late.</p><p>John checked his watch: 7:05pm. He wasn’t concerned, Sherlock didn’t strike him as the kind of person who was usually on time. But then again, with two years to wait…</p><p>His train of thought cut off as Angelo returned with the candle.</p><p> </p><p>Half an hour later and John was beginning to be concerned.</p><p>“He’s late?” Angelo asked, returning to the table for roughly the tenth time in as many minutes.</p><p>“Yes,” John replied simply, not summoning the will to be polite.</p><p>“A case perhaps?”</p><p>“Perhaps,”</p><p>“He didn’t call?”</p><p>“No,” John decided he couldn’t tell him he didn’t have his number. Why hadn’t he asked for his number?</p><p>“Let me get you another drink,” Angelo bustled away.</p><p> </p><p>8pm.</p><p>Angelo had started to pace subtly in the back of the restaurant.</p><p>John fidgeted with his cufflinks, a little embarrassed by the effort he’d made. He must have tried almost everything in his wardrobe before he’d settled on what to wear. He regretted the shirt.</p><p> </p><p>9pm.</p><p>John watched the street outside, focusing intently on each face as it approached.</p><p>None of them were Sherlock.</p><p> </p><p>10:30pm.</p><p>John wasn’t quite the only one left in the restaurant, but the kitchen was obviously closing and the staff making a show of wiping surfaces and tidying up.</p><p>John rose from his seat, he wouldn’t wait until they kicked him out, he had some dignity.</p><p>Angelo’s face as he came toward him was a picture of pity.</p><p>“I’m not sure where he got to,” John said brightly once he was close enough.</p><p>“Perhaps he forgot? He made the reservation a long time ago…” Angelo suggested,</p><p>“Yes,” John agreed absently.</p><p>“Let me get you your coat,”</p><p>“What do I owe you?” John asked, searching for his wallet as Angelo handed him his jacket,</p><p>“Nothing. Nothing for a friend of Sherlock’s,”</p><p>John didn’t reply, just pressed his lips together in the pale imitation of a smile. Then, nodding his thanks, he tried his hardest to leave with his head held high.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock was standing in the middle of a crime scene holding a piece of paper out in front of him. Police officers moved around him like he was a rock in the current.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You weren’t there. You didn’t come.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Sherlock had pocketed the note that morning as he’d dashed from the flat. Another case. His mind had been full of possibilities as he rushed across London. But once he’d arrived he’d been refused entry.</p><p>Obviously he’d complained. Loudly. Then asked if they knew who he was, or even who his brother was. Finally, he’d asked them to locate Lestrade, and stood back to wait. That was when his hand had brushed the envelope in his pocket, and to smooth his nerves he’d pulled out the letter. Only for the world to stop.</p><p>He’d not been there.</p><p>A thousand possibilities sprang up behind his eyes simultaneously and for once he couldn’t deduce an answer.</p><p>“Sherlock?” Someone was calling his name.</p><p>He looked up to find Lestrade was standing some way ahead of him, motioning him forwards. Sherlock pocketed the note.</p><p>“Victim is female,” Lestrade said as Sherlock approached, “Sylvia Jones, thirty-eight, self-employed, lived alone...” Lestrade turned to lead him through the building,</p><p>“Cut to it,” Sherlock wasn’t in the mood. “Is there a card?”</p><p>“Kinda.” Lestrade replied.</p><p>“What do you mean, ‘kinda’?” Sherlock asked, incredulous.</p><p>“You’ll see,” Lestrade motioned them forwards.</p><p>Turning into the room ahead of them Sherlock could see the body of a woman on the ground. A thousand deductions immediately reared up; connections and details, things he was sure most of the room wouldn’t have noticed. As he studied her he could see all the pertinent details of her entire life story, written as clearly as if she had dictated him her autobiography. But no card.</p><p>He looked back up at Lestrade in question, who said nothing in response, just raised his eyes to the wall behind Sherlock.</p><p>Sherlock turned. Behind him, scrawled in garish yellow spray paint, seven feet high, was a single letter: ‘M’.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>It was over a week before John summoned the courage to go back to Baker Street. He timed it for when he knew Mrs Hudson would be home, dropping in for their usual cake and chat. It also meant he knew there would be no pressure to pick up the letter he was sure would be waiting for him.</p><p>John couldn’t really articulate how he felt about the fact that Sherlock hadn’t shown. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge how much it had hurt or how abandoned he suddenly felt, despite the fact that he’d found himself with a larger support network than he’d had in a long time.</p><p>Since that evening alone in a strange restaurant he’d thrown himself back into his life in the present: a drink with Mike in the local, lunch with Molly, this cake with Mrs Hudson. There was even the suggestion that he and Mary “go for a drink sometime”. But he wasn’t sure what to make of that yet.</p><p>There was indeed a note waiting for him as he took his leave from Mrs Hudson, he picked it up on the way out the door and for the very first time made it all the way back to his flat before he opened it.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Something must have happened. I’m sorry.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve got two years; we can try again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>John folded it carefully once he had finished reading, tucking it out of sight. Right now, he had nothing to say in response.</p><p>
  
</p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“So far, no word on the time of death.” Lestrade said down the phone. It was 24 hours later, the crime scene had been processed and Sherlock had been summarily dismissed while the body was transported for medical examination.</p><p>“Molly?” Sherlock asked, he was pacing the landing of 221B.</p><p>“Not on this case,” Lestrade confirmed.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“She can’t cover every death in the city,”</p><p>“But she’s the best.”</p><p>“You mean she’s the easiest to intimidate to get faster results?”</p><p>“Not at all,” Sherlock peered over the banister beside him, down towards the dim hallway beneath him, then started to make his way down the stairs,</p><p>“You can’t scare results any faster than it’s already happening, they have a lot to process.”</p><p>“From the scene? She clearly wasn’t killed where she was found.”</p><p>“I know that, you know that, they need to confirm that,” Lestrade said.</p><p>Sherlock made it to the hallway and checked the desk. Nothing. He started back up the stairs again.</p><p>“Any word on her next of kin?”</p><p>“Mother listed on her medical record. We’re struggling to get in contact.”</p><p>“What do you mean?”</p><p>“She’s not answering her phone.”</p><p>“Have you left a message?” Sherlock said patronisingly. He was back on the landing. “E-mail? Facebook? Snapchat?”</p><p>“You know what Snapchat is?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“Of course I know what Snapchat is,” Sherlock leaned back over the bannister, squinting, then started back down the stairs.</p><p>“I don’t have any of those details for her, old fashioned phone will have to do. I’m sending some officers around to her last known address today.”</p><p>Sherlock, in the hallway again, checked the pigeonhole. Nothing.</p><p>He sighed.</p><p>“I’ll look from my end.” Sherlock started up back towards his flat.</p><p>“You do that,”</p><p>“Call me if you find anything.”</p><p>“I’ll do that,” Lestrade repeated in assurance.</p><p>“Anything at all, no matter how inconsequential your tiny brain might think it.”</p><p>“Now we’re resorting to insults?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>Sherlock sighed, offered no response. </p><p>“My tiny brain will call you,” Lestrade continued in the huffy silence, “If it finds anything,” He rang off.</p><p>Hanging up Sherlock found himself standing on the landing outside his sitting room again. He paused, looked back over his shoulder, and then turned, heading back down the stairs.</p><p>“What are you doing out there?” Mrs Hudson’s voice called from inside her flat, followed almost immediately by her door opening.</p><p>“Nothing,” Sherlock held up his mobile to her in evidence. “I was on the phone.”</p><p>“I could hear that,” She replied.</p><p>“A case,”</p><p>“And that case means going up and down the stairs over and over?” She asked,</p><p>“I’m waiting for a letter.”</p><p>“It’ll only come when the postman does,” She pointed out.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock said distractedly, “Yes I realise… I was just…” He tailed off, looking back over at the empty pigeonhole. “…on the phone.”</p><p>“You’ll wear the stairs out.” Mrs Hudson said affectionately, used to his odd behaviour.</p><p>“Yes,” He turned, and started back up them.</p><p>When he glanced back at the desk for a final time, it was still empty.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>Weeks slipped by before John could bring himself to go back to 221 to leave Sherlock the reply to his last note.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s too late</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It already happened, it didn’t work</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>A response seemed to come almost before he was able to look away from his letter.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Don’t give up on me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>John left without replying, he had both too much to say, and nothing at all.</p><p>The whole thing was ridiculous. His life was passing him by while he was invested in a fantasy, an impossibility. A person no more real to him than the characters in those silly detective stories he used to read. He had to stop living in the past, most specifically two years in the past. He needed to move forward.</p><p>He went for that drink with Mary.</p><p>“I’m glad you called,” She said with a smile as they took a seat at a quiet table in the corner of the pub. It was different to the place he usually frequented with Mike, more upmarket, a bit further from the hospital. He tried to tell himself that he’d chosen it because he was trying to impress her, but in reality he’d knew it was because he was unlikely to run into anyone he knew.</p><p>“Me too,” He offered in reply, watching as she unwound the many layers necessary for venturing outside in a London February. “It’s good to see you,”</p><p>“You too,”</p><p>“You look well,”</p><p>“You too,” She repeated and then realised what she’d done and laughed. John noticed for the first time that she was nervous, it hadn’t occurred to him to feel like that.</p><p>“What can I get you to drink?” He asked as a cover, rising back up from his seat,</p><p>“Wine please,” She answered quickly, so quickly it caused her to laugh nervously again, “White, dry, anything really.”</p><p>At the bar he gathered his thoughts.</p><p>This was a date. And, unlike that farce from a month previous, this was real. His date was pretty, she was nice, she was exactly his type and, most importantly, she was here. This could work, this was going to work. This was what he needed.</p><p>Drinks were poured and purchased and he took them back to the table.</p><p> </p><p>The evening passed by pleasantly. She told him about where she had grown up and her reasons for becoming a nurse. They fell easily into gossip about colleagues, stories from the hospital: that time so-and-so played a prank on whatshisname and how drunk thingamabob had been at that thing they went to. They laughed their way through his retelling of a story from med school and she discussed her reasons for favouring Thai food over Vietnamese.</p><p>They did not talk about those weeks he’d lain in a hospital bed in her care and the reasons for him being there.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You’re planning on getting dressed today?” Mrs Hudson asked from the threshold, the light from the hallway shining into the room from behind her.</p><p>Sherlock peered back at her from the sofa.</p><p>“You’re not Lestrade,” He told her in response, ignoring the question. He was at least decent; this was his second best dressing gown.</p><p>“Excellent deduction,” She smiled, moving into the room and over to the curtains, tugging them open.</p><p>“I thought you were Lestrade.” Sherlock clarified.</p><p>“You’re waiting for him?”</p><p>“He said he’d call.”</p><p>“You’re sitting at home, waiting for a boy to call?” She asked, vaguely amused.</p><p>Sherlock contorted his face at her in a mockery of a smile.</p><p>“Any post?” He asked instead, mainly to distract her but also because she’d reminded him.</p><p>“Only comes once a day,” She offered brightly as an answer. Sherlock took this to mean he’d already asked that day.</p><p>He went back to his laptop.</p><p>“Beautiful day out there Sherlock,”</p><p>“I can see,” He didn’t look up, but his keyboard was now better lit than it had been previously.</p><p>“Starting to look like Spring,” She continued,</p><p>“Don’t remind me.”</p><p>“Not long till Easter,”</p><p>“You don’t say,” Sherlock grouched.</p><p>“You caught that killer yet?” She asked, the same breezy tone, very different subject matter.</p><p>“I’m thinking of asking the Easter bunny,”</p><p>“Don’t be silly.” She replied in a tone that make Sherlock look up at her.</p><p>“I made some hot cross buns,” She held his gaze. “Why not get dressed and come have one?”</p><p>She was an evil genius, Sherlock decided, she knew just how to manipulate him.</p><p>He sighed dramatically and set the computer aside, springing to his feet.</p><p>“You win, Mrs Hudson,”</p><p>She smiled triumphantly.</p><p> </p><p>“Tell me about the case,” She asked. They were sitting across from each other at her small kitchen table, the hot cross buns warm and buttered on a plate between them.</p><p>“We’ve reached an impassh…” Sherlock replied through a mouthful.</p><p>“An impasse?” She repeated properly.</p><p>“Yes,” He swallowed, “And I find myself without an assistant.”</p><p>“You usually have an assistant?” Mrs Hudson asked, surprised.</p><p>“I have someone that I…” He thought about it carefully, “Consult with, occasionally.”</p><p>Mrs Hudson was silent, aware that this was likely more significant than it might sound on the surface. They both contemplated the ticking of the kitchen clock.</p><p>“I thought you worked best alone?” She asked,</p><p>“I used to.”</p><p>“And this person isn’t available at the moment?”</p><p>“No,” He said simply, then with a look from her added, “We had a falling out.”</p><p>“Something you did?”</p><p>“Something I didn’t do.”</p><p>“Oh.” She nodded in understanding.</p><p>Another pause.</p><p>“Can you make it up to them?” She asked and Sherlock’s eyes lifted from the plate of baked goods to look at her properly. She knew very well that the question sounded much more like one you’d ask of a lover’s quarrel than of a colleague. She also knew enough to keep it gender neutral. Sometimes, he decided, he didn’t give her enough credit.</p><p>“I’m not sure how.” He answered finally.</p><p>“Don’t give up on them.” Mrs Hudson said plainly, reaching over and giving the back of his hand a pat where it rested on the table.</p><p>Sherlock looked at her, unsure when she’d learnt how to read minds.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve received no response to my last letter and the work needs you. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Each time I feel close to solving this case it slips away from me. Six murders. Six cards, and I’m no closer to understanding the thread that binds these cases together than I am to understanding how I’m able to correspond with you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s all caught up in you. The first day I heard his name, I also heard yours. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Finding him will surely be my key to finding you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I don’t have all the answers. But he might.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yours,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John folded Sherlock’s most recent letter back into the pocket of his white coat. Able to <em>correspond</em> with him? John thought, like acquaintances or colleagues? Is that all they were doing?</p><p>And his <em>work</em> needed him? The work had seemingly been just fine before John had found some magical wormhole into the past and started sending letters through it.</p><p>He clenched his fist, striding over to the counter in the staff room and jabbing on the kettle.</p><p>He was just another case for Sherlock to solve. It had never been about him.</p><p>“Has the kettle offended you?”</p><p>A voice behind him caused John to spin around in surprise, he’d heard no one come into the room.</p><p>Mary was smiling at him.</p><p>“No, no,” He said on an out-breath, </p><p>“You looked pretty angry at it.” She pointed out,</p><p>“It’s nothing.”</p><p>“Was it not boiling fast enough?” She was smiling. Taken with the joke, “Too much steam?”</p><p>He huffed a quiet laugh, not meeting her eyes. Behind him the kettle boiled and clicked off.</p><p>“That’s better,” She said, coming over to him and lightly looping her arms around his neck, “I like it when you smile.”</p><p>And he smiled, for her.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You need to get down here.” Lestrade said as Sherlock picked up on the second ring.</p><p>“What is it?” Sherlock asked, he was sitting at his kitchen table, cataloguing ash samples and contemplating writing to tell John about it.</p><p>“A woman just walked into Lewisham Police Station,”</p><p>“Yes?” Sherlock asked tentatively, it sounded like the beginning of a bad joke,</p><p>“She’s claiming she’s Vanessa Stephens.”</p><p>Sherlock carefully put down the petri-dish. “The TV presenter?” He clarified.</p><p>“Personality,” Lestrade corrected.</p><p>“The one whose body we never found?” Sherlock clarified again.</p><p>“Yes,”</p><p>“I’ll be right there.”</p><p> </p><p>Lewisham Police Station was the largest in Europe. A seemingly endless warren of mint green corridors stood between them and the interview room where Ms Stephens was being held.</p><p>“You’ve spoken to her?” Lestrade asked as the uniformed officer escorted them through it.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And what did she tell you?” Lestrade asked, agitated.</p><p>“Not a lot.” She stopped them in front of a room that looked exactly like every other that they’d passed. “Wanted to speak to him.” The officer nodded in Sherlock’s direction.</p><p>Everyone looked at Sherlock.</p><p>“But you called Lestrade?” Sherlock asked the officer.</p><p>“It was his case.” She told Sherlock with a shrug, turning to leave, “We knew you wouldn’t be far behind.”</p><p>Sherlock and Lestrade exchanged a glance as he pushed open the door.</p><p>In the room behind a woman sat alone at an interview table. She had darker hair and a darker tan, but she was, unmistakeably, Vanessa Stephens.</p><p>“Afternoon,” Lestrade offered in greeting as they moved forward toward the empty chairs opposite her, “You’re looking well.”</p><p>“For a dead woman?” She answered, not looking at him.</p><p>“Well, yes.” Lestrade replied derailed.</p><p>They took their seats. Vanessa’s eyes were on Sherlock.</p><p>“How did you know the photograph was me?” She asked him.</p><p>Sherlock looked back at her, cataloguing her face as it was now and superimposing it against what he’d known about her from the picture he’d held in his hand all those months ago.</p><p>“Your blouse,” He said, when the silence had stretched far enough.</p><p>“Yes,” She nodded. “He said you would.”</p><p>“Who did?” Sherlock asked quickly.</p><p>She continued to stare at him. Didn’t reply.</p><p>Lestrade cleared his throat, leaning forward, “Can I ask where you’ve been?”</p><p>“Cuba.” Her eyes were still locked on Sherlock, and his on her. Lestrade looked quickly between the two.</p><p>“Right.” He pulled a notebook out of his jacket pocket and jotted something down. “Can I ask why you’re back?”</p><p>“I needed to speak to Sherlock Holmes.”</p><p>“Yes,” Said Lestrade, “The officer told us you asked for him.”</p><p>“How do you know who I am?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“He told me,” Vanessa replied.</p><p>“Who did?” Sherlock asked quickly. Again she stayed silent.</p><p>“Look.” Lestrade jumped in, seemingly the only one aware of the weird heaviness in the room. “You need to take us through it from the beginning…”</p><p>“I needed to get away.” She replied calmly.</p><p>“You faked your own death.” Sherlock jumped in the moment the words were out of her mouth.</p><p>She stopped talking. Pressing her lips together carefully.</p><p>Lestrade tried to signal ‘Not helping,’ at Sherlock with his eyes, but the man wasn’t looking at him. A full ten seconds passed with no one speaking.</p><p>“Seems a tad… dramatic,” Sherlock broke the silence, clicking his ‘c’.</p><p>“I had my reasons,”</p><p>“Your choice or his?” Again, Sherlock jumped in as she’d barely completed her final syllable. Again, she didn’t answer.</p><p>Lestrade stood up abruptly.</p><p>“A word.” He said to Sherlock, tightly, “Outside.”</p><p>Lestrade turned to go and Sherlock stood slowly, eyes on Vanessa until the moment he had to turn to follow him.</p><p>“What the hell is this about Sherlock?” Lestrade hissed once they were outside the closed door.</p><p>“She’s not cooperating.” Sherlock pointed out</p><p>“You’re not letting her!”</p><p>“We need to know everything she does about ‘M’,”</p><p>“Is that the ‘him’ you’re both on about?”</p><p>“Yes! ‘M’! Of course it is,” Sherlock cried, the volume of his voice rising. “We’re so close!”</p><p>“So close you’re about to blow it,” Lestrade hissed back.</p><p>They stared at each other.</p><p>“We need to find out why she did this, people don’t up and fake their own deaths for no good reason.” Lestrade explained slowly, as if speaking to a child.</p><p>Sherlock didn’t answer.</p><p>“And if she had help…” Lestrade started. Sherlock opened his mouth to jump in, but Lestrade knew what he was going to say. “’If! Sherlock,” Lestrade glared.</p><p>Sherlock closed his mouth.</p><p>“<em>If</em> she had help,” Lestrade started again, “Then, all well and good. She can tell us. You can’t just leap to conclusions.”</p><p>“I don’t leap,” Sherlock mumbled.</p><p>“Go home,” Lestrade told him. Sherlock looked back at him, mouth agape. “Go home, you’re too close to this, though god knows why.” Lestrade continued. “I’ll speak to her. And I’ll call you when I know something.”</p><p>“She won’t tell you anything,” Sherlock groused.</p><p>“We’ll see,”</p><p> </p><p>There was no letter waiting for Sherlock when he returned home. He found pen and paper and wrote anyway.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This is long overdue, but I owe you some credit: It was Vanessa Stephens. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But she’s not dead.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She may be my key to solving all this.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I miss you,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>The phone rang as he was finishing his signature.</p><p>“You were wrong,” Lestrade said with a not insignificant air of smugness as Sherlock picked up.</p><p>“I was?” Sherlock asked in surprise,</p><p>“Yes,” Lestrade was enjoying himself.</p><p>Sherlock rolled his eyes, “I find that…” Sherlock started but Lestrade cut him off,</p><p>“…hard to believe? Well, believe it. You were wrong, she did tell us something.”</p><p>“Well?” Sherlock asked,</p><p>“Well what?” Lestrade really was enjoying this too much</p><p>“Well, what did she have to say?” Sherlock continued,</p><p>“We have a name.” Lestrade replied, then paused.</p><p>“Are you going to make me beg?”</p><p>“Moriarty.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“So, you and Mary?” Molly asked, sandwich in hand, sunshine overhead, a beautiful London spring day.</p><p>John had been waiting for the question. He sighed and made a show of taking a bite of his sandwich, chewing thoughtfully.</p><p>“Early days,” He said around it.</p><p>Molly clearly wasn’t placated with the answer, she pressed on.</p><p>“But you like her?”</p><p>“Yeah,” John said tentatively, as if trying out the thought.</p><p>“Don’t drown me in emotion here…” Molly replied sarcastically.</p><p>“As I said: early days,”</p><p>“You…” Molly started, then stopped. John looked over to find her studying his face, likely deciding what his reaction might be before framing the thought.</p><p>“What?” He asked, in the face of her scrutiny.</p><p>“You told me, a while back, that you’d met someone…”</p><p>John sighed again, looked away. Of course. He braced himself.</p><p>“Was that Mary?” She asked.</p><p>He turned to her in surprise. “No!” He answered reflexively,</p><p>“I didn’t think so,” Molly agreed, “So… What…?” She tailed off, unable to frame the question.</p><p>“What happened to them?” John asked for her,</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“We had a falling out,” John said carefully, “I guess.”</p><p>“You guess?”</p><p>“Well yeah, no argument, just…” He wavered, “The timing was wrong.”</p><p>“Oh,” She said</p><p>And he agreed.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You can’t just…”</p><p>“I need to speak to her…” Sherlock demanded. He was in Lestrade’s office.</p><p>“We let her go,” Lestrade told him levelly.</p><p>“You what?”</p><p>“We let her go,” Lestrade had an uncanny ability to grow calmer the more irate Sherlock became. Perhaps that was the secret of their working so well together. “She wasn’t charged with anything. It was never a case.” He shrugged.</p><p>“Wasting police time!” Sherlock cried.</p><p>“It was only your time she really wasted.”</p><p>“Wasting my time then!”</p><p>“Not a crime,” Lestrade replied with a curt nod, “If it was I’d already be banged up.”</p><p>Sherlock had already started his retort when the second half of the sentence derailed him,  causing him to stare back at Lestrade with his mouth hanging half open.</p><p>Lestrade laughed.</p><p>“Look,” Lestrade continued, patting himself on the back for defusing Sherlock’s ire. “You haven’t asked me what she told us yet, just barrelled in demanding to speak to her yourself.”</p><p>Sherlock didn’t say anything. Lestrade stared back at him in pantomime expectancy.</p><p>“What did she tell you?”  Sherlock finally ground out.</p><p>“Absolutely everything you said was true.” Lestrade said, levelly.</p><p>Sherlock inclined his head slightly in an ‘I told you so’ gesture but resisted saying it out loud.</p><p>“It’s an age-old story:” Lestrade continued, sliding a copy of a written statement across the desk, “TV personality, dropped by her publicist, losing her public image, in a bad place with the secret boyfriend. Just add a few paps with some rather unflattering pictures, a spot of blackmail and…”</p><p>“Enter Moriarty,” Sherlock cut in, bored of the preamble.</p><p>“Yes. Touted himself as a general ‘fixer’. He was the one that suggested the fake death. Any publicity is good publicity and all that.”</p><p>“She did make the papers.”</p><p>“An obituary doesn’t do wonders for a person’s ability to book more work.”</p><p>“I agree,” Sherlock said, he was scanning the page in front of him, already summarised by Lestrade, “How did she find this Moriarty?”</p><p>“Recommended by someone at the publicist’s office.”</p><p>“Mr Osborne.” Sherlock concluded. Lestrade nodded once.</p><p>“We’re bringing him in,”</p><p> </p><p>“When we spoke to you previously Mr Osborne you claimed you knew nothing about the business card we found with your things,” Lestrade said to the man sitting opposite them over the interview room table.</p><p>Mr Osborne was not wearing his pink trousers today. Instead it was his shirt that was pink, currently exactly the same hue as his face.</p><p>“I didn’t know anything about it,” He said curtly,</p><p>“We do have it on good authority that you know the person who the card belongs to,”</p><p>“On who’s authority?” He counters.</p><p>“I’m not at liberty to say, Mr Osborne,” Lestrade replied cordially.</p><p>Mr Osborne shifted a little in his seat, glancing between Sherlock and Lestrade and opting to say nothing.</p><p>“Does the name Moriarty mean anything to you Mr Osborne?” Lestrade tried instead.</p><p>Despite the fact that he must have known that it was coming, a significant amount of the colour drained from the man’s face as the name was spoken.</p><p>There was a long silence, but eventually he nodded, very carefully.</p><p>Lestrade took a deep breath. “So you do know him?”</p><p>“Knew.” Mr Osborne corrected, “Yes.”</p><p>“You lied?”</p><p>“No.” Mr Osborne jumped in quickly. “You only asked me about the card. Before. I didn’t know anything about a card.”</p><p>Lestrade and Sherlock exchanged a glance.</p><p>“It wasn’t yours?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“No.” Mr Osborne said firmly.</p><p>“You withheld evidence.” Lestrade stated.</p><p>“I was scared.”</p><p>Lestrade studied him across the table. “What did this Moriarty do for you Mr Osborne?” he asked.</p><p>“Advice,” The man said slowly.</p><p>“About?”</p><p>Mr Osborne took a deep breath and flicked his gaze down to his hands in his lap.</p><p>“About how to kill my landlady.”</p><p> </p><p>“Bit easy don’t you think?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>It was thirty minutes later; all the details had been taken down and an officer called to read Mr Osborne his rights. They’d taken their leave as the officer entered, moving into the corridor.</p><p>“Guilt got the best of him.” Lestrade suggested, shrugging.</p><p>“He didn’t ask for a lawyer,” Sherlock pointed out.</p><p>“No, well, that’ll be sorted now,” He waved vaguely back at the room and started to walk away.</p><p>“He claimed he was scared and then just… gave it all away?” Sherlock asked, following him.</p><p>“I expect he’ll be asking for our protection.”</p><p>“But he hasn’t…”</p><p>“Not yet no, but give him a chance, he just confessed to murder.”</p><p>“Exactly,” Sherlock said firmly, as if it proved his point. Lestrade blinked at him in confusion, not following his train of thought, but then again, he was used to not being able to follow Sherlock’s train of thought.</p><p>“Go home,” Lestrade sighed, suddenly overcome with exhaustion, “I have paperwork to do.”</p><p> </p><p>Once home, Sherlock crossed immediately to the desk.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We’re nearing the conclusion. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He’s no longer leaving breadcrumbs, now they’re practically loaves. He wants me to follow them. He wants to be found. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I failed in finding you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I won’t fail again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yours, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>JOHN</p><p>“Dr Watson,” There was a voice calling John’s name, one he already didn’t have time for, despite having barely started his shift.</p><p>John hummed distractedly in response,</p><p>“Dr Watson!” The voice called again,</p><p>“Yes?” He snapped in response. He was tired and grouchy. The hot London days made his shoulder throb.</p><p>He turned to find an unfamiliar nurse trying to attract his attention.</p><p>“There’s someone asking for you in reception.” The nurse said shortly, taken aback by his tone.</p><p>He held her gaze for a moment, before standing down. “Sorry,” He sighed, “Thank you.”</p><p> </p><p>It was Mrs Hudson, she stood as she saw him coming toward her.</p><p>“Good to see you,” She smiled as he came closer, opening her arms for him. Moving into them briefly John found himself surrounded by the comforting scent of her perfume.</p><p>“You’ve not been to see me…” She chastised playfully as they pulled apart,</p><p>“Er, I… Yes, it’s…”</p><p>“Don’t worry dear, I know you’ve been busy,” She didn’t let him finish, or fully pull away, instead she held on to his arms, studying him. “My. That does suit you,” She said, referring to his lab coat.</p><p>He laughed, nervously, aware of the high likelihood that he was blushing.</p><p>“Thanks, I think,” He replied, eyes darting around them. “I…” He started, contemplating his schedule,</p><p>“Oh, I know you’re busy,” She read his mind. “Don’t worry, I was just in the area and I thought I’d stop in and see you in your natural habitat.” She winked. “You’ll come see me in mine soon won’t you dear?”</p><p>“Yes,” John breathed out, relieved, “Thank you, I will. Monday. My day off,”</p><p>“Pop over for lunch?”</p><p>“I will,” He smiled,</p><p>She smiled back momentarily before remembering herself: “Oh and I brought you these,”</p><p>Smoothly she dipped into the handbag held at her elbow and produced a small bundle of letters, holding them out to him.</p><p>John found he was only able to stare back at them, astonished. Each was blue, neatly folded, his name carefully looped on the front of the topmost sheet. His stomach dropped suddenly through the floor.</p><p>“Whoever it is doesn’t realise you’ve moved out,” Mrs Hudson was saying calmly, somewhere above his awareness. She was holding them out to him as if they were nothing more than paper. They were nothing more than paper.</p><p>When John finally realised that he should be reaching out to take them from her it was as if his arm were moving through water. The air around them thick and viscous.</p><p>“Thank you,” He rasped out with effort, when he finally held them in his hand. There must have been dozens.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” She replied in a tone that showed she had no idea of the significance of the moment, “I’ll see you Monday,”</p><p>She turned to walk away with a smile.</p><p>John didn’t watch her go, still too fixated on what he held in his hands.</p><p> </p><p>John couldn’t go back to work straight away. He knew it didn’t matter that there were things to attend to, or that he had rounds, or even patients. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do his job with those letters tucked in the pocket of his coat.</p><p>Instead he retreated to the staff canteen, quiet at this time of the evening, his hands shaking a little as he opened the first letter, dated two years and two months previous:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The work needs you. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I need you,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John blinked at the page. It was exactly what he’d wanted Sherlock to say after that last letter.</p><p>But John had been angry. He’d not been back. He’d not given Sherlock the chance to say the words.</p><p>John turned to the next note, dated some weeks later.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I miss you,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>John blinked at it.</p><p>Then he turned to the next: an account of the case, telling him about Vanessa Stephens. It was dated after the first but before the second and John realised that they weren’t in any kind of order. He opened each for the date and reassembled them, reading through more methodically.</p><p>Even sorted into the correct order their form was random; some short, some long, some as detailed as police reports, others just unrefined thoughts:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I am a man of logic, John. You defy that logic,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Somewhere along the way Sherlock seemed to have gotten himself confused between John and his mysterious ‘M’, now seemingly identified as Moriarty. As if somehow solving the case would be Sherlock’s key to understanding the reason for their being able to write to each other.</p><p>Or even, bring John back to him.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock stood statue still in front of the writing desk in the hallway of 221, staring hard at the pigeonhole. It was empty.</p><p>Over the passing months it had begun to fill up with words of his own, each sheet added beside the last, but now: gone.</p><p>“What are you up to out here?” Mrs Hudson’s voice called from inside her flat, bringing him back to himself.</p><p>“Nothing.” He answered quickly, hoping to placate, but instead her door opened and she appeared.</p><p>“You don’t have a home to go to?” She joked, with a smile.</p><p>“I…” He started to say but halted as she stepped out into the hallway beside him and pulled her door closed behind her. “You’re off out?” He asked instead, deflecting.</p><p>“Mrs Turner’s birthday, I told you dear.”</p><p>“You did?” He asked, feigning interest but knowing it was exactly the kind of inconsequential detail that he would have deleted immediately</p><p>“Yes, 13<sup>th</sup> July.” She said, walking away from him. She closed the front door behind her with calm finality.</p><p>Sherlock blinked at it, aware that there was something about what she had said that was pulling at his subconscious.</p><p>July.</p><p>The moment it came to him he was heading toward the door, his hand already raised as he made it to the edge of the pavement. He told the cabbie to take him to St Bart’s.</p><p> </p><p>“Captain John Watson,” He told the nurse behind the reception desk. Again. He repeated the words carefully as if the reason she wasn’t complying was that she hadn’t heard him.</p><p>“I’m sorry Sir,” She replied, “I can’t let you see him.” She continued, exactly as she had the first time. This time she followed it with: “Your name isn’t on the list.”</p><p>“The list?”</p><p>“Yes, of approved visitors,”</p><p>She looked at him like he was an imbecile. He looked back at her in much the same way.</p><p>“I…” He started but was interrupted.</p><p>“Hello again,” A female voice said behind him. He turned. A blonde woman in nurses scrubs stood behind him, arms folded, “Fancy bumping into you.”</p><p>Sherlock realised they’d met before. “Mary,” He said in greeting.</p><p>“Everything alright?” She asked, looking between him and the receptionist.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock started, “I was here to see a friend, but it seems my name isn’t on the list.”</p><p>“Captain Watson?” She asked,</p><p>“You overheard?” Sherlock asked surprised,</p><p>“I just assumed.” She said with a shrug and a smile, “You said you were a friend of Mike’s and so is he…”</p><p>“Of course, yes,” Sherlock smiled back, realising she was the key to him gaining entry, “Very well deduced,” He added.</p><p>She smiled back faintly, then turned to the nurse behind the reception desk.</p><p>“I can vouch for him,” She said matter-of-factly, “He’s a friend.” Then without waiting for a reply she turned back to Sherlock and beckoned him forward down the hall. Sherlock couldn’t resist shooting the nurse a quick grin as he followed.</p><p>“How is he?” Sherlock asked, somewhat unimaginatively, as they walked away together.</p><p>“In a bad way, I’m afraid,” Mary replied, “We’re keeping his visitors to a minimum, hence all the security,”</p><p>Sherlock nodded. “Is he awake?” He asked,</p><p>“Sometimes,” She replied as she stopped them in front of a door about halfway down the corridor, “But generally he’s under pretty heavy sedation. It helps with the healing process,”</p><p>She opened the door for him and stood aside.</p><p>“I’ll give you some space,” She said with a smile and Sherlock nodded his thanks, brushing past her and going inside.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John stepped forward into that familiar room and took a long look around.</p><p>Today seemed to be a day for remembering. He’d been a long time pouring over the letters, finally rising and making his way back toward ITU when the words started to blur on the page.</p><p>His route back however had taken him down this painfully familiar corridor, one he usually avoided at all costs. He’d spent too much time here, not long enough ago now, but the door had been open as he passed and for some reason in the mood he was in he’d been unable to stop himself from venturing inside.</p><p>Not a lot had changed in the two years he’d been away: the same four walls, still the shade of dull mint green that seemed ubiquitous with public buildings, the same rack of monitors, the same bed.</p><p>He took a long time to drink it all in. His head a muddle of the things Sherlock had said to him in his letters, and days that he’d spent here, before he’d known him. John was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear when someone entered the room behind him.</p><p>“Hello again,” Mary said pleasantly, her tone light.</p><p>John turned quickly, feeling caught out and guiltier than he would have admitted, she took this all in with a glance.</p><p>“Are you lost?” She teased, “Or brooding?”</p><p>“I didn’t know you were working tonight,” John countered when he found his voice.</p><p>“Just got here.” She acknowledged with a smile, pausing to take in his face. He had no idea what she was reading there and she didn’t comment on it. “So which is it?” She asked instead.</p><p>He contemplated his options carefully, turning back to look at the neatly made bed again.</p><p>“Remembering,” He said.</p><p>“Where it all started?” She said with a sigh, the lightness in her voice showing she was doing her best to lift his mood.</p><p>John realised on hearing it that he really had no business dwelling on the past as he was doing. Not when she was there, trying so hard to snap him out of it.</p><p>He tramped everything down, turning back to her and smiling faintly.</p><p>“Our romantic beginnings,” He agreed, finally committing himself to the conversation.</p><p>“Not that you remember them,” She was still teasing,</p><p>“I do, sometimes,” He said in his defence. “Faces,”</p><p>“Mine?”</p><p>“And others,” He agreed.</p><p>“You didn’t get many visitors,”</p><p>“Many?” John asked, huffing a laugh, “I’d be surprised if I had any.”</p><p>“A few,” Mary said casually,</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“Mike of course, and oh, a friend of yours,” She spoke as if she couldn’t quite put a finger on the memory, “Someone Mike knew too…”.</p><p>John went very still.</p><p>The ghost of Sherlock, so close already, seemed to enter the room with them. A living, breathing figure: vacillating on the threshold.</p><p>John blinked hard, telling himself he was being stupid. He only thought she was talking about Sherlock because he’d been thinking of him. A lot of people knew him through Mike. All the old med school gang for a start.</p><p>But hadn’t Mike said they’d never visited him?</p><p>“Oh?” John was impressed by how casual he managed to sound despite the wars occurring in his mind.</p><p>“Yes,” She continued brightly, unaware of his struggle, “He’d been in a few times, I’d seen him, around the hospital,”</p><p>“What did he look like?” John asked tightly.</p><p>“Oh I can tell you his name, not one you forget in a hurry. It was Sherlock Holmes.”</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock stepped through the door with not a small sense of foreboding and found himself lingering on the threshold, uncertain. Up until this point he’d known only that he had to come, not what would happen once he was here.</p><p>It was late and the lights in the room were turned low, an allowance made presumably to allow the patient to rest, though it was negated by the noise the monitors made in their constant vigil.</p><p>John’s eyes were closed, his skin pale, made paler by the bandages across his temple and torso. One shoulder was completely covered by the rough hospital sheet, the other arm lay bare.</p><p>With effort Sherlock quieted the cacophony of his self-doubt and stepped forward, purposefully not thinking too hard as he reached out to take the uncovered hand. He lifted the roughened fingers from the bed carefully.</p><p>John was tanned, Sherlock thought, but no tan above the wrists. Sherlock paused mentally to analyse the thought: deduction or defence mechanism? He wasn’t sure.</p><p>“I’ve been writing to you, John,” Sherlock said very quietly, eyes on John’s closed eyelids. “You’ve not been replying.”</p><p>John’s face was calm in the drug-induced sleep, but there were creases across his forehead that Sherlock didn’t think he’d seen before. From pain? He wondered. Worry?</p><p>He flicked his gaze back to the monitors around John’s head, their rhythmic beeping strangely calming.</p><p>“You will get better, John,” Sherlock said, looking back at him. He watched for any sense that he might have heard him, or that he was disturbed. John didn’t move.</p><p>Bolstered, Sherlock squared his shoulders and leaned a little closer,</p><p>“It might not seem that way right now, but you will get better.”</p><p>Sherlock’s fingers traced across the back of John’s hand, not the first time he’d touched him but so much more intimate than a handshake.</p><p>“You’ll get better and you’ll write to me.” Sherlock’s voice was rough, and low, “That letter will change my life, though it will take me a while to work that out.”</p><p>John’s hair was blonder than it had been before.</p><p>“Then you’ll write me another.”</p><p>Sherlock was holding John’s hand now to stop himself reaching for his face, to stop him smoothing John’s too-long hair across his temple or tracing those worry lines across his forehead.</p><p>“And another.” Sherlock continued, his voice barely above a whisper, “Until you write the one that brings me here…”</p><p>Sherlock stopped, gaze flicking between each of John’s eyes.</p><p>“And that makes no sense at all.” He smiled, wryly. “<em>You</em> make no sense at all.” He was aware of the catch in his throat.</p><p>Sherlock took a slow breath in through his nose, his mouth turning minutely with a wry smile.</p><p>Standing silently now for long minutes, the room held its breath amid the mechanical beeps. He wanted to reach forward, wanted to raise that hand he held to his lips, but he didn’t dare.</p><p>“It was always you, John Watson.”</p><p>“Can I help you?” An authoritative male voice said firmly behind him and Sherlock dropped John’s hand as if it burned, spinning to find Mike Stamford standing in the doorway.</p><p>“I…” Sherlock started to say, then stopped, casting around for something to say.</p><p>“I remember you from the party.” Mike’s eyes were narrowed in distrust.</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock agreed, “I’m a friend,”</p><p>“Of Molly’s?” Mike asked.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock said again, “And John.”</p><p>“Oh,” Mike stood a little straighter, shifting his shoulders, perhaps remembering. “Right,”</p><p>“I came to see how he was.” Sherlock said, a bit unnecessarily and Mike nodded once, stepping forward to stand closer to the bed and moving his gaze to the figure lying there.</p><p>“Not all that great,” He replied finally, more at John than at Sherlock.</p><p>“I can see,” Sherlock’s reply was quiet.</p><p>For a moment they stood together in silence, but Sherlock’s mind was whirring.</p><p>“He’ll be needing a place to stay.” He said very quietly,</p><p>Mike, clearly confused by the non-sequitur, turned to look at him.</p><p>“When he’s better.” Sherlock clarified.</p><p>“I…” Mike hadn’t caught up yet.</p><p>“I’m heading out of town.” Sherlock lied.</p><p>“…And?”</p><p>“I’m going to need someone to look after my place while I’m away. You should suggest it to him. When he’s ready.”</p><p>There were a few seconds of silence as Mike looked between Sherlock, practically a stranger, and John, motionless on the bed.</p><p>“I-I’m sorry?” Mike stammered out finally, “How well do you know him?” He asked, perfectly reasonably.</p><p>“Oh, only distantly,” Sherlock was putting on the airy tone he used when he was trying to hide the fact that he cared, deeply. “Friend of a friend. But he’ll need somewhere to stay when he’s back on his feet and I’ll need someone to look after my place while I’m away. Logical really. Just thought of it. We’d be doing each other a favour.”</p><p>Sherlock turned to leave suddenly, stepping back away from the bed. He was disappointed to have to cut the visit short but knowing he wouldn’t be able to keep explaining himself for long,</p><p>“Would you ask him?” He added, already most of the way to the door, “When he’s well enough?”</p><p>“Sure, I…” Mike was still blinking in the headlights of the thought.</p><p>“I’ll be in touch with the details, my landlady will so enjoy having someone around while I’m gone. And she can look out for him, in his recovery.”</p><p>The plan was sounding more convincing the longer Sherlock spoke, even though he knew, in some strange back-to-front way, that it had already happened.</p><p>“I guess…” Mike finally acquiesced.</p><p>Sherlock reached the door and pulled it open, calling back over his shoulder a final:</p><p>“Look after him.”</p><p>Then he was gone.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“You knew him?” Mary asked, when John had been quiet too long after she’d said his name.</p><p>“Yeah, I…” John had no idea what to say, “A little,”</p><p>“Enough for him to visit.”</p><p>“Yeah, I guess. Perhaps he was passing.”</p><p>“You weren’t friends?”</p><p>“Not really,” John shrugged, trying to telegraph a casualness he didn’t feel.</p><p>“Oh.” Her eyes dropped away from him.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Just wondered,” Now it was her turn to prevaricate.</p><p>A pause,</p><p>“I should probably get back to work,” She said breezily with a smile. John barely had enough time to nod an acknowledgement before she’d turned and was gone.</p><p> </p><p>The rest of John’s shift passed in a welcome, but uncharacteristic, haze of quiet. He caught up with the paperwork he’d neglected, making up his absence to his colleagues and checking in with his patients. Through it all however the heavy weight of the letters in his pocket was like an anchor, calling him home.</p><p>But not the one in Farringdon.</p><p>The moment his shift was over his feet knew where they were going without his head having told them so: not in the direction of his little flat, sitting quiet and expectant for his return, but to the tube station and the westbound Metropolitan line train.</p><p>Baker Street was hushed and expectant when he arrived, the summertime darkness sitting across it like a too-heavy blanket.</p><p>Letting himself in through the familiar front door, he passed silently along the hallway. He knew now which floorboards squeaked, where to put his feet on the deepest parts of the rug to avoid the click of his soles. He paused at the writing desk as he passed, slipping his hand into the empty pigeonhole and resting it there, as if in absolution.</p><p>Then he looked up the stairs.</p><p>In all the time he’d spent in this building since he’d moved out, he’d not once climbed these stairs. He’d always wondered about those rooms at the top, his thoughts inevitably straying to the way they had been: the wallpaper, the way the daylight sliced through the front windows, the feel of the cushion on his chair at the small of his back. But he’d never actually had the nerve to navigate the creaking floorboards of the stairs themselves.</p><p>This evening he did. The temperature around him rising subtly as he ascended; the stale air of a flat no longer lived in.</p><p>The sitting room was startlingly empty as he pushed open the door. John had to stand for a long time to get used to the feeling of absence in the room.</p><p>It was a place holding its breath.  </p><p>Stepping forward the true force of his memories took over and John found himself superimposing the past against the sharp empty angles of the space around him: the bison skull on the wall, Billy the skull on the mantlepiece, Sherlock’s eclectic book collection.</p><p>Then John looked at the bookcases again.</p><p>Where, from the doorway, they had appeared empty, from this angle he could see that a single book remained. He moved forward, thankful of the silent boards beneath his feet.</p><p>It was, of course, his book. The detective stories he’d left on a platform, so long ago now.</p><p>He cracked open the cover,</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>John, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I told you I’d keep it safe.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Like this novel I’ll find my way back to you someday.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Your detective,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Looking back at the shelves he wondered at when Sherlock had left it there. When he came back to collect his things, perhaps? Or more recently? Or, a more tempting thought, had it always been there? Hiding amongst the others in plain sight as he had passed just three feet away every day, going about his life.</p><p>The letters in one hand, the book in the other, John cast his eyes in another long sweep around the room. Remembering. Then he lowered himself slowly, to sit on the floorboards.</p><p>His throat heavy.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“You’re sure?” Mrs Hudson said, she was standing on the landing, facing him over his assembled bags,</p><p>“I’ve told you,” Sherlock said with a sigh, “It’s for a case.”</p><p>“One that you can’t solve from here?”</p><p>“No.” Sherlock stated firmly, “I’ve made arrangements for someone to stay and look after my things. You shan’t be lonely,”</p><p>“It’s not me I’m worried about,”</p><p>“I’ve plenty to occupy me.” Sherlock assured her,</p><p>“You’re staying with your brother?” She asked, as if the two statements were linked.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock allowed the thought to darken his face.</p><p>“I didn’t even know you had a brother,” Mrs Hudson fusses,</p><p>“I don’t like to dwell on the fact.”</p><p>“He’s helping with the case?” She asked, expectant.</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock lied. He stooped to pick up his bags.</p><p>“Don’t forget your scarf,” Mrs Hudson rushed, a little overcome with the goodbyes,</p><p>“It’s August.” Sherlock pointed out.</p><p>“It’s your favourite,” She said as if it explained everything. She moved forward to slip it from the peg and drape it across the top of the bag he was holding.</p><p>Sherlock rolled his eyes a little but accepted it as the gesture of affection that it so clearly was.</p><p>“You’ll visit?” She asked, expectantly.</p><p>“Of course,” Sherlock said, knowing he wouldn’t.  </p><p>He turned and headed down the stairs, Mrs Hudson on his heels.</p><p>“Look after yourself,” She beseeched as they reached the hallway. Sherlock couldn’t resist a glance to the pigeonhole. Empty. Obviously.</p><p>“You too, Mrs Hudson,” He turned to give her a kiss on the cheek before letting himself out into the bright summer day.</p><p> </p><p>Time passed.</p><p>Mycroft welcomed him into his life and his home with generously gracious acceptance and in turn Sherlock did his very best to avoid him at all costs. Something that wasn’t too difficult in the palatial apartment.</p><p>Away from his familiar surroundings Sherlock threw himself obsessively into the case. Scattering the details seemingly randomly across the four walls of his bedroom and linking them with pins and thread in a manner designed to find order in the chaos.</p><p>It didn’t work.</p><p>The facts would continually spiral through Sherlock’s over-active brain at all hours of the day and night, making rest impossible. He’d regularly pace the room way into the early hours, running over the options time and again, until the walls would blur together in a confusing cacophony of newsprint and red marker and he’d curse his inadequate brain, or his inadequate resources, to finish what he’d started.  </p><p>He stopped writing to John.</p><p>Without access to the pigeonhole it was fruitless. John was further away from him now than he had been when he’d been touring Afghanistan. And he was staying in Sherlock’s old rooms.</p><p>This detail in particular seemed designed to drive Sherlock to distraction: John in his flat, touching his things, sitting on his chair, sleeping in his bed. Sherlock swallowed, staring at the details on the walls without really seeing them.</p><p>Perhaps this was the key, he thought to himself, John had always been the key. What would John say?</p><p>Sherlock peered at the displayed information through the gathering evening gloom and stilled in the silence to wait for an answer. He got one in the form of a noise: a growl of his stomach.</p><p>Sherlock smiled.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re up early,” A brisk voice behind him and Sherlock turned in surprise, a piece of toast gripped between his teeth. Mycroft was standing on the threshold.</p><p>Sherlock mumbled something incoherent at him in response,</p><p>“I’m sorry?” Mycroft asked in surprise. Whether it was at the fact that his brother was there, that he was eating or that he was attempting to communicate wasn’t clear. Maybe it was all three.</p><p>“Late.” Sherlock repeated, more audibly this time, through his mouthful, “I’m up late.”</p><p>“I see your insomnia doesn’t improve your manners,” His brother acknowledged, moving past him to his space-age coffee machine and placing the few things he’d been carrying on the countertop between them.</p><p>Sherlock grunted in response.</p><p>“And for how much longer am I to have the pleasure of your sunshine in the morning?” Mycroft asked, his back to him,</p><p>“Not much longer,” Sherlock mumbled, unsure of the answer,</p><p>“And the case?” Mycroft asked,  </p><p>“No progress,”</p><p>A heavy pause.</p><p>Mycroft turned, holding out a mug to him and Sherlock raised his eyebrows in surprise,</p><p>“You know I don’t mind having you to stay.” Mycroft said quietly, his tone warmer than before, “Family and all that,”</p><p>“You’ve never minded too much about family.” Sherlock responded; voice rough, reaching for the mug.</p><p>“Of course I have,” Mycroft corrected, “I helped support you in your previous crisis of accommodation, didn’t I?”</p><p>“It wasn’t a crisis of accommodation.” Sherlock pointed out, “It was rehab.”</p><p>“I helped when you needed me.” Mycroft said, sipping his coffee.</p><p>“You did nothing at all. You got your goons to pack up all my things from the flat in Montague Street and put them into storage.”</p><p>“They were available when you returned.”</p><p>“You’ve never even been to the flat in Baker Street.”</p><p>“Would you have let me in?” Mycroft held his gaze and Sherlock was the first to look away, a gesture akin to surrendering the point.</p><p>“I’ve been keeping an eye on you, from afar. Well. Until you turned up on my doorstep.”</p><p>“Don’t be dramatic.” Sherlock screwed up his face, “I called first.”</p><p>Mycroft took another drink from his coffee, his turn to concede the point.</p><p>A pause.</p><p>“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>Mycroft checked his watch. “As a matter of fact…” He moved toward the door,</p><p>“It’s cold outside, wear a coat!” Sherlock called after him in a mocking, motherly tone. “And you forgot…” Sherlock started, seeing the stack of papers on the countertop.</p><p>Then he stopped.</p><p>On the top of the pile was today’s newspaper, half the headline visible on the front page. He pushed a finger at it to unfold it properly:</p><p>
  <em>‘Mighty Mogul Murdered. Met Mystified.’</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“What the hell is this?” Sherlock demanded, less than an hour later when he marched through the doors of Lestrade’s office. He threw the newspaper down on the desk between them as Lestrade raised his eyes, half in surprise, half in exasperation.</p><p>“How did you get in here?” He asked.</p><p>Sherlock rolled his eyes.</p><p>“I need to speak to that journalist.” He demanded, poking savagely at the page on the desk. “And the detective in charge of the case. Amateurs! The case is clearly linked! How many more have we missed!?” Sherlock had had some time stuck in the back of a black cab to work himself into peak rage.</p><p>“That would be me.” Lestrade said, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms in defiance of Sherlock’s ire.</p><p>“You?” Sherlock asked, derailed.</p><p>“I’m the detective.”</p><p>They contemplated each other for a few moments. Sherlock was seemingly at a loss for words.</p><p>“There’s no evidence at all that this is linked with your murders, Sherlock.” Lestrade said calmly. “No card, nothing complicated.” He leant forward again and it was his turn to poke at the headline, “And we’re not ‘mystified’. The case is on-going.”</p><p>“Why wasn’t I involved?”</p><p>“You’ve told me again and again you only want to be involved with the interesting cases,” Lestrade said, frustrated. “Believe me, nothing interesting about this one: bloke murdered over money, dodgy investment deals. We’ve got plenty of leads and we’re pursuing them.” He looked down at the paper again. “But…” He picked the paper up, “Who are they kidding with that headline…?”</p><p>“He’s taunting me.” Sherlock said firmly.</p><p>“Who is?”</p><p>“Moriarty!”</p><p>“You think Moriarty has something to do with this just because of some heavy-handed alliteration in a headline?”</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock said firmly, holding Lestrade’s gaze.</p><p>Lestrade’s mouth fell open to argue but seemingly got stuck, instead he dropped his gaze to look at the article again, as if something were falling into place.</p><p>Sherlock got tired of the silence. “I need to speak with the journalist.”</p><p>“You said that already…” Lestrade sighed, without looking up. “Ever heard of a phone?”</p><p>Sherlock glared in response, something that Lestrade didn’t appreciate until he looked back up at him.</p><p>“Come on then,” Lestrade said with resignation, “I get your point. I’ll come with you; I can fill you in on the details in the car.” He rose.</p><p>“Cab,” Sherlock corrected, but Lestrade, having started his morning insulted, was having none of it.</p><p>“Car.”</p><p> </p><p>“We need to speak with Lucy Shields, she wrote the headline piece in the paper today?” Lestrade asked the receptionist.</p><p>This was Lestrade’s job, Sherlock had long ago decided, he was the one that handled the situations where politeness would achieve greater results than intelligence.</p><p>“She’s not available,” The receptionist told them curtly.</p><p>Lestrade said nothing, instead he fished his police ID from his jacket pocket to show to him. The receptionist offered it only a cursory glance.</p><p>“She’s not available.” He repeated, looking back at his monitor.</p><p>“She’s not here? Or not available?”</p><p>The receptionist sighed. “Hasn’t showed.”</p><p>“Anyone heard from her?” Lestrade asked, eyebrows raised.</p><p>“Nope.” The receptionist popped the ‘p’ in a manner familiar to Sherlock.</p><p>“Is that like her?” Lestrade asked.</p><p>“Look, she’s left us a lot of sh… stuff to sort out,” The receptionist said lifting his eyes back to them and not answering his question, “I’m swamped.”</p><p>“No problem.” Lestrade said, with a tense smile, “Give me her address and we’ll be out of your hair.”</p><p> </p><p>Lucy Shields lived in a modest flat above a florist in Angel. They arrived just as officers were stringing police tape across the front door.</p><p>Lestrade was out of the car the moment it had pulled to a stop, already fumbling in his pocket for his badge.</p><p>“What is it?” He asked the nearest officer with authority, flashing his ID.</p><p>“Detective Inspector!” The officer’s eyes went wide, “Didn’t know you’d been called.”</p><p>“I wasn’t.” Lestrade answered, then repeated: “What is it?”</p><p>“Body of a young woman.” The officer offered, quietly, his face solemn, “Looks like suicide.”</p><p> </p><p>It was over twelve hours later that Sherlock stepped from the cab onto the pavement outside his brother’s apartment.</p><p>It was late, but sleep was the furthest thing from his mind, the details of the day still buzzing behind his eyes as he let himself through the be-columned front door and padded across the impossibly plush carpet to the apartment door. He’d already mapped out how the case would be added to his evidence wall; the strings that could be connected, the pins to stick in the right places.</p><p>As he opened the door of the flat however, the noise in his mind palace was immediately silenced. He froze in the doorway.</p><p>The lamp in the sitting room was on.</p><p>It wasn’t his brother. At this hour he’d be working or sleeping. Or possibly eating, Sherlock appended mentally, but there was no light from the kitchen.</p><p>Sherlock squared his shoulders, schooling any trace of expression from his face. Then stepped forward toward the half-open sitting room door, pushing it wide.</p><p>“Most people knock,” Sherlock said calmly as he entered the room, the words spoken before he’d laid eyes on the occupant, “But then again, you’re not most people.”</p><p>The man sat calmly in Mycroft’s favourite leather wing-backed chair by the fireplace, his legs crossed at the knee. His figure was slight and his suit non-descript, but his eyes shone bright with intelligence.</p><p>“Kettle’s just boiled,” The man said calmly, reaching carefully for the cup and saucer balanced on the small side table beside him,</p><p>Sherlock remained where he was, regarding him coolly.</p><p>“Moriarty, I presume,” Sherlock said icily.</p><p>“Bingo,” Moriarty confirmed in a stage whisper, using the purse of his lips to take a sip from his drink. His eyes were wide.</p><p>“You’re in my house.”</p><p>“I’m in your brother’s house.” Moriarty corrected, “How is the big bro?”</p><p>“Out.”</p><p>“Obvious,” The word was high and drawn out, before he abruptly switched back to a normal tone: “I thought I owed you a visit.”</p><p>“Time you showed your face?”</p><p>“Time to introduce myself properly. You’ve seen my work, naturally.”</p><p>“I’ve you to thank for Ms Shields?”</p><p>Moriarty tipped his head to one side. “Did I get your attention?”</p><p>“You wrote the headline?”</p><p>“Don’t be so gauche… Lucy did.”</p><p>“To get my attention?”</p><p>“Worked didn’t it? I like to see you dance.” Moriarty widened his eyes with the word,</p><p>“And once she’d served her purpose?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“She was expendable. Most of them are…”</p><p>Sherlock didn’t reply, just stared back at him, the silence of the room loud with the ticking of the ancient grandfather clock in the corner.</p><p>“I’ve given you a glimpse, Sherlock,” Moriarty started, “Just a teensy glimpse of what I’ve got going on out there in the big bad world...”</p><p>Sherlock cut him off: “The others? They were glimpses?”</p><p>“Dear Jim.” Moriarty’s voice had gone high and sing-song: “Please will you fix it for me to get rid of my nasty landlady…”</p><p>“Mr Osborne.” Sherlock identified calmly.</p><p>Moriarty didn’t respond, just turned to place his cup and saucer very carefully on the surface beside him.</p><p>“And Vanessa Stephens?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“She was quite taken with you,”</p><p>“You said nice things?” Sherlock sneered.</p><p>Moriarty inclined his head as if accepting thanks.</p><p>Sherlock continued: “And Stephanie Preston? And…” He wavered as he realised he’d failed to catalogue any of the other names; they’d been inconsequential details at the time. “…the Cylidate?”</p><p>Moriarty sighed dramatically, rising and pulling the front of his jacket straight. If he’d noticed the hesitation he didn’t comment on it.</p><p>“It pays the bills…” He replied instead, disinterestedly.</p><p>“Where do I fit in?”</p><p>“You don’t.” Moriarty moved forward, “I just find you interesting. I enjoyed you playing the game.”</p><p>“People died.”</p><p>“That’s what people DO!” He screeched the word, coming closer. He was almost a full head shorter than Sherlock but that served to make him no less intimidating.</p><p>“Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain,” Moriarty stared up into Sherlock’s unreactive face, “I’m a specialist, you see…” He paused, eyes widening in mock realisation, “Like you!”</p><p>“You’re nothing like me.” Sherlock replied levelly.</p><p>“I don’t know…” Moriarty put a finger to his lips, then wagged it between them: “Consulting detective, consulting criminal… Two sides of the same coin.” He stalked forward. “We’re both so much <em>more</em>. More than these little people in this little city. Such little <em>lives</em> they have... We work best alone, you and I.” Moriarty paused expectantly, but received only a cool stare in response. “We have no use for them, but they… They <em>bow</em> to us. To them, we are kings…”</p><p>Tired of him, Moriarty moved away, back toward the door, his voice full of mirth as he called out behind him:</p><p>“And honey, you should see me in a crown!”</p><p> </p><p> JOHN</p><p>John woke with a start, his heart racing as the hard line of his nightmare pulled taught across his chest.  </p><p>He lay silent for a long time, regulating his breathing and staring up at the ceiling in an effort to extinguish the panic. The air in the room was heavy and liquid, threatening to drown.</p><p>Knowing there was no chance of going back to sleep he turned carefully, slipping his legs out from under the duvet and standing. The floorboards were painfully cold beneath his feet.</p><p>Casting a quick glance at Mary, facing away from him in the bed, he padded from the room and into the kitchen, drawing the curtain more fully against the rain battering at the window and clicking on the kettle.</p><p>He’d been dreaming of Sherlock.</p><p>They’d been strange, half-formed dreams full of danger and uncertainty; Sherlock, standing alone against unknown threats and John, unable to help him.</p><p>The kettle clicked off, bringing John back to the present. He prepared his tea slowly, carrying it with him to the living room and slowly sinking down into the armchair by the fireplace.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>“Sherlock?” It was Mycroft’s voice that drew Sherlock out of his mind palace sometime later. “What are you doing in my chair?” </p><p>Sherlock found that he was, in fact, sitting in the armchair that Moriarty had so recently vacated. It had been the closest available perch as Sherlock had retreated into himself, reviewing what had been said and processing everything he’d learnt.</p><p>It wasn’t until that moment however, blinking up at Mycroft, that all those strands of information started to coalesce. A single thought remained, and with it the tentative start of a plan.</p><p>“Mycroft,” Sherlock said heavily, looking him dead in the eye.</p><p>Above him Mycroft stilled completely, his concern hardening in his eyes.</p><p>“What do you need?” He asked calmly.</p><p>Mycroft’s entire stance had changed, his shoulders notching back and his back lengthening. It was the posture of a man preparing for battle.</p><p>“I think...” Sherlock started, thoughts passing rapidly behind his eyes: abstract ideas, unspecified alternative options.</p><p>He took a moment to carefully press his lips together, recognising the import of the moment. Then continued:</p><p>“I need your help.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>Time continued to pass.</p><p>Autumn shifted to winter, the cold London nights drawing together and forming a backdrop for this year’s jolly Christmas lights.</p><p>In short order John found himself standing again on the peripheries of the St Bart’s Christmas party, tinsel strung around his neck as the holiday colours blurred into a swirl of movement around him. Between long pulls on his warming beer he was watching his girlfriend and best friend chatting easily across the room, their blonde and brunette heads bent close together.</p><p>He watched, disconnected, as the two threw their heads back in shared laughter, before Mary raised her eyes and met his across the crowded room. She detached herself and came over to him.</p><p>“What were you and Molly chatting about?” He asked as she approached.</p><p>“Reminiscing,” Mary replied coyly. She took the beer from his hands and took a long drink, turning to look back at the room rather than at him, “We’ve worked together for ages, but never really gotten to know each other.”</p><p>“Funny how things work out,” John replied, without finding it particularly funny. He took his drink back and took another swig.</p><p>“She was telling me about that police officer she used to date.”</p><p>John stopped, his bottle to his lips, looking at her in surprise.</p><p>“She used to date a police officer?” John asked, realising he’d never really thought of Molly and dating in the same sentence before,</p><p>“Oh yeah, I met him a few times. He came to one of these once…” She gestured around herself.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“Nothing much, these things are always the same…” She said distracted, spotting someone she knew across the room and waving to them.</p><p>“I meant with them.” John clarified.</p><p>“With them?” She shrugged, “Fizzled out. They lost someone, a friend.”</p><p>John was silent in response, not wanting to offer the usual platitudes or expressions of surprise, but not really sure what else to say.</p><p>“I’m surprised she never told you about him,” Mary pointed out.</p><p>John hummed a response, raising his beer back to his mouth just for something to do.</p><p>“Oh, there’s Karen, I should go say hi,”</p><p>In a blur Mary had left again, crossing the room to greet a nurse coming towards her as if they were long lost relatives.</p><p>John watched them idly. Wondering at what he learnt about his friend and considering what she could have lost. Inevitably, with thoughts of loss, his thoughts turned to Sherlock.</p><p>He wondered what kind of evening he’d be having if it was Sherlock he was watching across the room instead of Mary. But even as the thought occurred, he dismissed it. Sherlock wouldn’t be across the room greeting acquaintances, he’d be standing with John, watching, and probably offering well-timed observations designed specifically to make him smile.  </p><p>Or solving a crime, of course.</p><p>John shook the thought away, realising quite suddenly that this was somewhere he intensely didn’t want to be. He put down his half-finished drink on the nearest table and pulled the tinsel from around his neck, discarding it at the same time.</p><p>He’d never understood the purpose or necessity of it anyway.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>SHERLOCK</p><p>The holidays came and went, Christmas barely more than a jolly light in the peripheries of Sherlock’s vision as he continued to work on the case. Plans were firmly in motion now, the gears turning finally in Sherlock’s direction,</p><p>“You’re eating that or playing with it?” Mycroft asked above him and Sherlock looked up from his bowl of rapidly congealing Shredded Wheat,</p><p>“Haven’t decided.”</p><p>Sherlock’s perpetual petulance at everything his brother said to him had begun to ease over the last few months, but habits were hard to break.</p><p>“You’re not at work?” Sherlock asked, knowing his brother’s shared dislike of anyone stating the obvious.</p><p>Mycroft turned his eyes to the ceiling momentarily. “On my way out,” He replied, moving forward, “I wanted to bring you this.”</p><p>He dropped a flimsy folder unceremoniously onto the table beside Sherlock’s untouched breakfast. Sherlock locked his gaze onto it.</p><p>A full three seconds passed before he raised expectant eyes back up to Mycroft’s face.</p><p>Mycroft merely nodded his response.</p><p>There was a tense pause then, broken suddenly by Sherlock’s mobile on the table between them. He snatched it up on the second ring.</p><p>“Yes?” Sherlock said into it,</p><p>“There’s been another.” As expected, it was Lestrade’s voice on the other end.</p><p>“Where?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>“Putney Pier.”</p><p>“There’s a card?”</p><p>“Not just that. He’s asked for you by name.”</p><p>Sherlock’s gaze shot upward to where Mycroft was watching him, their eyes catching tightly in another moment of understanding.</p><p>Sherlock took a careful swallow before replying, to both that were listening:</p><p>“I’m on my way.”</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“So, are you going to tell me what this is about?” John asked with a laugh as he followed Molly from the building. They were both bundled up against the winter cold, clutching their sandwiches.</p><p>“Lunch, John,” Molly replied breezily, not looking round, “You know lunch? That meal between breakfast and dinner? The one we used to have together, all the time?” There was a smile in her voice, she was teasing him.</p><p>“We still eat lunch together!” John protested.</p><p>“When was the last time?” She asked, carefully looking both ways before crossing the street in front of the hospital.</p><p>“I…” John thought for a second as he followed, then drew a blank. “Ok, granted, I can’t remember…”</p><p>“Not since you got a girlfriend...” She drew out the word in childish mockery,</p><p>“But why outside?” He asked, jumping a little on his heels as he walked, anything to generate more heat. “In February?!”</p><p>“Tradition.”</p><p>“We have a tradition of freezing to death?”</p><p>She let herself through the tired old gate and into the small garden opposite the hospital, holding it for him to pass through before turning and tracking over to sit on the single bench.</p><p>“You don’t remember?” She asked and sat down with a flourish, gesturing around them to the empty flowerbeds and bare trees.</p><p>John stopped where he was and looked at her, the smile on his face fading slowly. A sudden memory reared up.</p><p>“It’s Valentine’s day.” He said finally in realisation.</p><p>“Happy Valentine’s, John.” She was still smiling, “I figured since I’m sure you have some exciting and elaborate things planned with Mary for dinner,” She continued to chat away sweetly, “Then I’d get to take up your time at lunch…”</p><p>Her words were beginning to fall out of focus,</p><p>“We sat here two years ago.” John said.</p><p>Molly stopped talking, her smile faltering, “Yes.” She said carefully.</p><p>“We sat here and…” John said, dazed. He glanced behind him and back to Molly, his chest contracting at the memory of the day: the hopelessness, the fear, the desperation of the time after, the time he’d spent trying to save a stranger on the pavement.</p><p>It had been that day that had spurred him to go back to Baker Street, seeking the comfort of someone he knew and finding instead the comfort of someone he didn’t: in the form of a letter.</p><p>“I knew him.” Molly said calmly.</p><p>John, aware that he had, yet again, got lost in the past, shook his head a little to clear it and attempted to process what Molly had just told him. It seemed momentous somehow, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.</p><p>“What?” He asked quietly.</p><p>“I knew him.” She said again, her good mood gone, her face pale against the blue of her scarf. “The man who jumped. The one you couldn’t save. I knew him.”</p><p>John stared at her, open mouthed, at a total loss for what to say.</p><p>“I didn’t tell you, at the time,” She continued, “You were so upset…”</p><p>“You…” John’s voice rasped on the single word, then failed to produce anything else.</p><p>“I didn’t know you so well then...” Molly’s eyes had filled with tears, she looked away to hide them. “He and I were friends.” She sniffed, “At least, I think he would have called me a friend… Can’t believe it’s been two years.”</p><p>As if someone had hit the reset button John’s mind came suddenly back online and facts slowly started to realign themselves: building ideas, ideas that made sense..</p><p>“What was his name?” John asked, very quietly. Molly looked back up at him, holding his gaze as she spoke, her mouth forming the words very carefully.</p><p>“Sherlock Holmes.”</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>The cab took an age to take Sherlock from his brother’s Westminster flat to zone three. He spent the entire journey drumming his fingers hard onto his leg, staring out vacantly at the buildings passing his window while his mind worked furiously behind his eyes.</p><p>Finally the cab drew up beside the blue lights of the police cars parked along the river front. Lestrade waved him over the moment he saw him.</p><p>“Young female, no ID yet,” Lestrade said to Sherlock as he got close, motioning down to the small beach below them, created as the tide went out. From this distance all Sherlock could see was the outline of a large dark shape on the sand, surrounded by figures in hi-viz jackets who were doing their best to shield it from the view of curious onlookers who huddled in cold bunches on Putney Bridge.</p><p>“The card,” Sherlock demanded, once he’d taken it all in. Lestrade handed him the evidence bag he already had in his hand; he’d known this would be the first request.</p><p>The card was the same as the other times they’d seen it, but the message, scrawled in thick black letters across the front, was new:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Get Sherlock,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Jim Moriarty</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“Let me see the body.” Sherlock demanded.</p><p> </p><p>“We still can’t find any record of him anywhere,” Lestrade said as they skirted together around to the boating ramp that would lead down to the shore. “I mean it, Sherlock, it’s more than weird: it’s impossible. Since you gave us the name we’ve searched everything, everywhere. We’ve turned the internet upside down. He doesn’t exist.”</p><p>“He exists,” Sherlock flashed the card up behind him as evidence.</p><p>As they approached the body on the shore the officers around it stepped back to let them through. Sherlock crouched to get a closer look. There was a pause as he took in the details, his eyes were the only thing that moved.</p><p>“This is staged.” Sherlock said eventually.</p><p>“We can see that.” Lestrade replied, exasperated.</p><p>In front of them the body of a young woman lay face up in the grey mud of the Thames, eyes staring blankly to the sky. She was dressed in a pale jumper, floral apron and white lab coat, the strange ensemble completed with a dark blue scarf almost the exact replica of the one currently wound around Sherlock’s neck.</p><p>“It’s staged for me...” Sherlock continued, paying Lestrade as much attention as he usually did at these times, which was to say: very little.</p><p>The body wasn’t the only thing lying in the mud. Around the prone woman lay various objects: a badly broken violin bow, a rolling pin, the mashed remains of a conical flask, a magnifying glass.</p><p>“I’m not going to ask about the cuffs…” Lestrade said, pointing them out to him some way away, half submerged in the grey. Sherlock studied them from a distance.</p><p>“It’s for me, but it’s not all about me…” Sherlock said, half to himself, his eyes flicking around at each item in turn.</p><p>Abruptly Sherlock moved forward in his crouch, using the evidence bag he still held in his left hand to flick the edge of the lab coat back into place across the victim’s front. An ID was pinned to the pocket: NHS issue, laminated and bearing the image of Doctor Molly Hooper.</p><p>Beside the photograph: a single line of text, followed by a mobile number:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The game is on,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>M</em>
</p><p> </p><p>The moment Sherlock had read the message his face raised to Lestrade. For a beat everything was still, their eyes locked.</p><p>Then on some unspoken agreement both sprang into action, turning and striding as one back to the embankment. As they rushed back to land Lestrade raised the radio he was holding to his mouth:</p><p>“We need a unit to the flat of Dr Molly Hooper, address…” Lestrade rattled off the information, but Sherlock wasn’t listening. Instead he was barking his own instructions to the nearest officers:</p><p>“Get someone to Baker Street, Mrs Hudson is in danger.”</p><p>Lestrade, already off the radio, nodded his assent and the surrounding figures scattered to their vehicles. Lestrade went one way, Sherlock another, something Lestrade only realised as they both had one foot in different cars.</p><p>“You’re going to Baker Street?” Lestrade called out to him.</p><p>“Molly is in good hands,” Sherlock nodded, an acknowledgement, “I need to check on Mrs Hudson,”</p><p>Lestrade nodded, turning.</p><p>“Greg!” Sherlock’s voice stopped him and he turned back, “You’re the only person in my life that carries handcuffs.” Sherlock said heavily, eyes full of meaning, “Look after yourself.”</p><p>Lestrade nodded quickly once, swallowing, before ducking into the vehicle.</p><p>Sherlock climbed into his, the officers confirming instructions before he was rushed in the opposite direction.</p><p> </p><p>“Mrs Hudson!”</p><p>Sherlock flew from the police car the moment it pulled up outside, fist banging on the front door. It was 10:30 on a Thursday morning, she had to be home.</p><p>“Mrs Hudson!” He called again, as the police officers caught up to him and started flicking glances at each other behind his back that they thought he couldn’t see.</p><p>Finally, the door was opened.</p><p>“Such a fuss, Sherlock!” Mrs Hudson was saying from the other side, but Sherlock wasn’t listening, already crowding her back into the house, making certain to put his own body between her and any view there was from the street.</p><p>“Inside, Mrs Hudson,” He called to her as he did so, his voice clipped. She offered only a few noises in confused protest, before spotting the officers in hi-viz behind him and finally acquiescing.</p><p>Once they’d made it to her kitchen she stood in the centre of it in confusion, Sherlock whirling about the room, checking everything he could think of. The officers took up posts in the hall and doorway.</p><p>“Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Sherlock?” She asked, watching him, surprisingly level-headed. “I don’t see you for months and then you just…”</p><p>“A threat has been made on your life.” Sherlock replied bluntly, cutting her off.</p><p>Mrs Hudson stopped talking abruptly.</p><p>Sherlock was checking the lock on the window above the sink. For the third time. He became aware of the vacuum her lack of chatter had created and turned to look at her. Her eyes were wide and worried but her stance was resolute. She said nothing, just watched him desperately.</p><p>He stopped, dropping his shoulders.</p><p>“It’s entirely my fault, Mrs Hudson.” He tried to level his voice, moving forward toward her and placing his hands very carefully on the outside of each of her shoulders. “I can offer you my genuine assurances that you will have the full resources of the Metropolitan police to protect you...”</p><p>“It’s serious?” She said, her stare levelled up at him.</p><p>“What makes you say that?”</p><p>“You always use a lot of syllables when you’re worried...” She said in a thick voice, smiling faintly. He regarded her properly for a few moments, he’d not seen her for too long. The corner of his mouth ticked up.</p><p>He opened his arms to her and pulled her to him. As he did so he realised that it was something he should have done the moment he walked through the door and, he was surprised to realise, not just for her reassurance.</p><p>“You’ll be quite safe,” he said, his cheek resting against the top of her head, “I would never let anything happen to you.” His voice was a low rumble. Her hands behind his back pressed him close.</p><p>They stood like that for a few moments, Sherlock dimly aware of the radio chatter in the hallway outside, the arrival of officers, their routine combing of the street.</p><p>Then something occurred to him. He pulled back, releasing her.</p><p>“Is there anyone else in the house?” He asked, eyes pulled upwards toward the ceiling.</p><p>“You mean John?” Mrs Hudson asked, catching his gaze.</p><p>Sherlock couldn’t ignore the lurch in his chest that the name produced, he nodded once.</p><p>“He moved out,” She said and at the same time Sherlock’s phone pinged loudly in his pocket with an incoming text. “I did tell you…”</p><p>Sherlock scanned his mind palace quickly, recalling vaguely a phone call a few weeks previous. He’d been preoccupied, with the case.</p><p>“I wondered whether you’d be wanting to come back…” She was continuing, but he had tuned her out, pulling out his mobile and opening the text. It was Lestrade.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Molly not at home. Working.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>It read. Sherlock fired off a reply.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>I’m closer. On my way.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>He turned back to Mrs Hudson, putting his phone away.</p><p>“I need to go,” He said,</p><p>“You’re leaving?” She asked, an obvious waver in her voice.</p><p>“You have three officers stationed between you and any possible harm, Mrs Hudson,”</p><p>She eyed them warily.</p><p>“It’s fine,” He stepped forward and dropped his hands back onto her shoulders, “He wouldn’t risk making a move when you are so obviously protected.”</p><p>She looked up at him, offering an unconvincing smile and reaching up to pat his hand on her shoulder.</p><p>“And who’s protecting you?” She asked quietly, her eyes so full of concern he had to pull away.</p><p>“I’ll be fine.”</p><p>He strode from the room.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>“I need to go.” John said abruptly,</p><p>Molly, still sitting ahead of him on the bench, stopped with her mouth open.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I need to go.” He’d not said anything since she’d said the name, the one John had known she was going to say almost the moment that she’d started speaking about him.</p><p>Of course. The man on the roof, the man on the pavement. It had been Sherlock. It explained why he hadn’t shown at Angelo’s, the reason that Molly and Greg no longer spoke.</p><p>The moment John realised it, he also realised the reason that this impossible thing had happened to him. He had always been meant to save that man on the pavement. Not by conventional means, not as a doctor, but as a person.</p><p>He looked at his watch. He still had time.</p><p>“I have to go.” John repeated, unable to articulate himself any further than those four words.</p><p>Ignoring the shock on Molly’s face he turned and hurried away, transported briefly in his mind to that time two years ago, when he’d rushed this same distance. He was more sure on his feet now, no cane to slow him down, no crowd of people, no collective stare upwards.</p><p>Instead John rushed out into the centre of the empty street, waving desperately at a passing taxi and jumping into the backseat almost before it’d pulled to a complete stop.</p><p>“Baker Street,” Was all he said to the driver, who looked at him with interest in the rear-view mirror. John realised he was still wearing his scrubs, couldn’t hurt, he thought to himself. “As quickly as you can, please.”</p><p>And the cab screeched away from the curb.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>The cab pulled up to the curb. Sherlock was up and out the moment it stopped, pausing only to hand far too much cash to the waiting cabbie and rushing through the doors into the confusing web of hospital hallways.</p><p>One flight down and one long sterile corridor later he was pushing open the door of the morgue.</p><p>The room on the other side was brighter and busier than he had ever seen it. Doctors and nurses moved to and fro, their green gowns and masks obscuring their faces and blurring their outlines against the dull green walls.</p><p>Sherlock moved closer, toward a crowd around one of the tables.</p><p>“Molly?” Sherlock asked, unable to care that there was a quiver in his voice. “I’m looking for Dr Molly Hooper?” He asked one of the masked figures randomly.</p><p>Everyone had paused in what they were doing as he’d first called her name, turning to look straight at him. As he clarified his request a number stepped backward, revealing a figure standing at the head of one of the examination tables, fingers deep in the open skull of a cadaver laid out before her. She was so absorbed in her work that she was the only one who’d not registered his presence.</p><p>As he watched she called a quick request to the nurse beside her, putting out a gloved hand. It was only when the desired instrument was not handed over that she looked up from her work, first at the nurse and then in the direction the nurse was looking: right at Sherlock.</p><p>“What’re you doing here?” She asked, with only mild surprise, her words muffled by her mask,</p><p>“A threat has been made on your life.” He said clearly and plainly, looking her directly in the eye.</p><p>The room made a small collective gasp, reacting in exactly the way Sherlock had predicted their mundane minds would. Molly however continued to blink calmly back at him.</p><p>“I know.” She said levelly.</p><p>“You know?”</p><p>“Lestrade called.”</p><p>“You need to...” Sherlock started, but she cut him off.</p><p>“I’m working, Sherlock,” She turned her gaze away from him, back to the inside of the corpse’s skull. She repeated her instruction to the assisting nurse, who finally turned to comply.</p><p>“But…” Sherlock started,</p><p>“Tell me where you think I’d be safer and I’ll go there,” She said without looking up.</p><p>Sherlock remained silent, his mouth working but no suggestions presenting themselves. His floundering was so uncharacteristic that it had her look back at him.</p><p>They locked eyes across the room.</p><p>“I trust you.” She said finally, immediately finding the right thing to say to him.</p><p>He nodded once, with more outward assurance than he felt, suddenly aware of the people around them, staring at him.</p><p>“Officers are on their way.” He said definitively,</p><p>She nodded and went back to her work. He turned to leave.</p><p>“They can stay outside,” She called after him as he neared the door, and Sherlock felt that smile tick the side of his mouth again.</p><p>Officers were indeed arriving as he made it back into the hall, he spoke with them briefly, then he turned to stride away.</p><p>His phone pinged in his pocket and he pulled it free, the text conversation he’d started in the cab still open on the screen. His message had been read, sent to the number provided on the card:</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Come and Play</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Bart’s hospital rooftop</em>
</p><p>
  <em>SH</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>And now there was a reply:</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>I’m waiting…</em>
</p><p>
  <em>JM</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>JOHN</p><p>The urgency in John’s limbs meant that his step down from the cab onto the pavement outside 221 Baker Street was a shaky one.</p><p>He paid the driver with haste, thanking him profusely for the piece of blank receipt paper and the pen that he’d made use of on the journey across London. The note he’d written was now clutched close to his chest as if made of something precious.</p><p>John let himself through the front door of the building with shaking fingers, unheeding of whether or not the noise he made would draw the attention of Mrs Hudson. Once on the other side it took only three steps to cross the front hall and unceremoniously stuff the paper into the pigeonhole.</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>As he stepped out into the blank expanse of cement on the deserted roof of St Bart’s hospital Sherlock’s sense of calm wavered at the edges. Everything was in place. But Moriarty’s unpredictability seemed to be the only predictable thing about him.</p><p>Moriarty himself was currently sat calmly on the raised lip around the edge of the roof, deliberately not watching Sherlock’s approach and instead playing on his phone.</p><p>There were a few beats of silent stalemate.</p><p>“Ah,” Moriarty was the one to break it, still not looking up, “Here we are at last. You and me, Sherlock, and our problem,”</p><p>Sherlock stopped walking, three paces away. Moriarty finally raised his head to look at him.</p><p>“The final problem.” He concluded, his eyes were cold.</p><p>Sherlock stayed silent and they contemplated each other, warily.</p><p>Suddenly everything about Moriarty’s demeanour changed: a smile brightening his face as he leant back to cross one leg over the other.</p><p>“It was lovely to see you,” He said pleasantly, “All those months ago now. At your brother’s place.”</p><p>Wary, Sherlock didn’t react.</p><p>“Made me realise a lot of things about you. Things I thought we had in common.”</p><p>The cheerful look in Moriarty’s face fell out all at once.</p><p>“You were a good distraction. For a while.” A sigh. “But now I don’t even have you. Because I’ve beaten you.”</p><p>Sherlock remained dispassionate, waiting for him to go on.</p><p>“And you know what?” Moriarty continued, “In the end it was easy. Because you’re <em>ordinary,</em> just like the rest of them.”</p><p>Moriarty lowered his head, rubbing his face.</p><p>Sherlock shifted from one foot to the other and Moriarty snapped his head back up. He rose to his feet, tweaking at his tailored trousers and taking a single step forward toward Sherlock.</p><p>“Ordinary,” Moriarty said again, with venom. “Like the reason you’re here…”</p><p>“Why am I here?” Sherlock said slowly, the first words he’d said.</p><p>“Your friends are in danger.”</p><p>“You made a threat on their lives.</p><p>“Yes.” Another cold smile. “Did you like that?”</p><p>“Who was the woman? In the river?”</p><p>“Oh, inconsequential.” Moriarty waved a hand, “I’m disappointed in you Sherlock, the old you wouldn’t have worried about that.”</p><p>Sherlock stared back at him.</p><p>“But you’re not the old you, are you?” Moriarty’s words were thoughtful.</p><p>“What are you going to do to them?” A pause, “My friends?” He clarified, pushing the words out tightly.</p><p>Moriarty widened his eyes.</p><p>“The old you would have known that.” He said, sing-song.</p><p>Sherlock pressed his lips together and Moriarty watched him carefully, studying his expressions.</p><p>Evidently frustrated with what he saw there, he abruptly whirled to one side, his hands in his hair.</p><p>“No, no, no, no this is too easy!” He cried, to the space beyond the edge of the roof, before turning back at Sherlock, his face manic: “Three bullets; three gunmen; three victims, there’s no stopping them now!” His voice raised to a shout.</p><p>Sherlock’s mind flashed to the clues left with the body: the rolling pin, the handcuffs, the ID Badge: Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Molly.</p><p>“Unless you jump.” Moriarty said with gravitas, stepping aside to reveal the drop at his back.</p><p>The words hung heavy in the air, exactly as Moriarty had intended them to.</p><p>“You’re insane.” Sherlock forced the words through his lips,</p><p>“You’re just getting that now?!” Moriarty screeched.</p><p>Sherlock took an aborted step toward him, unable to tramp down the swell of anger in his stomach. It must have flashed on his face.</p><p>“There’s nothing you can do now, Sherlock. You can do anything you like with me…” He spread his arms, inviting Sherlock forward, taunting him, “But nothing is going to prevent them from pulling the trigger. Your only three friends in the world will die.”</p><p>Sherlock closed his eyes at the words, focussing on the inside of his eyelids as he pressed his hands hard against his trouser pockets. Gathering his thoughts.</p><p>“Unless…” Moriarty continued, voice high.</p><p>“Unless I kill myself.” Sherlock supplied, opening his eyes again to look not at Moriarty but across at the raised lip of stone around the edge of the roof.</p><p>“Unless my people see you jump.” Moriarty agreed, his tone now contrastingly deadpan.</p><p>Sherlock stepped forward, this time away from Moriarty and toward the raised edge.</p><p>Beside him Moriarty was silent. Perhaps he’d never expected it to be so easy, or that Sherlock would go so willingly for those he loved.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John was pacing the corridor of 221, up and down. His footfalls were heavy and desperate, his chest rising and falling as if he’d just climbed eight flights of stairs.</p><p>He was firmly not looking at the writing desk, desperate for it to be empty, willing the note to be gone, but unable to check in case it wouldn’t be found. It had to be found, had to be taken, to be read.</p><p>He was running the words of his letter over and over in his mind, already memorised, repeating them to himself like a mantra.</p><p>He hoped it was enough</p><p> </p><p>SHERLOCK</p><p>Sherlock halted, time stretching out vertiginously before him.</p><p>“You’re wrong.” He said heavily, before turning his head slowly to look at Moriarty. “There is something I can do,” He continued, “Something I’ve done.”</p><p>Moriarty raised his eyebrows, waiting for him to go on.</p><p>Then very quietly, in the distance, the sound of helicopter blades.</p><p>“Those three people aren’t the only ones who care about me.” Sherlock continued, the noise above growing, drowning out the sounds of London below. Sherlock had to raise his voice to be heard: “You forgot someone.”</p><p>From his pocket he produced a crumpled piece of receipt paper, holding it aloft so Moriarty could see. Moriarty looked at it in confusion.</p><p>The helicopter was above them now, the updraft created by the blades causing their hair and clothes to flap frantically around them.</p><p>“Raise your hands!” An authoritative voice came down to them from the loudspeaker, Sherlock didn’t have to raise his eyes to know that the instruction wasn’t being levelled at him.</p><p>The note that Sherlock was holding flapped nauseatingly in the wind and he grasped it tighter, moving it back to his trouser pocket as Moriarty abruptly lurched toward him.</p><p>Sudden hot, panic flashed in Sherlock’s gut and he took an abortive step backwards.</p><p>“Raise. Your. Hands.” Came the order again. Sherlock and Moriarty had locked eyes: Sherlock’s calm and considered, Moriarty’s wild.</p><p>Then, as Sherlock watched, they became resigned, and it was with a final roll of the eyes that the other man finally raised his hands to the sky.</p><p> </p><p>JOHN</p><p>John was sitting, head in his hands on the second step in the hallway of 221 Baker Street. His stomach was in knots, his mind falling over itself to run through every possible scenario where he was too late, where it had all been in vain, where everything that had happened to him, to them, had been for nothing.</p><p>Finally he could stand it no longer, raising his eyes to the pigeonhole.</p><p>It was empty.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Sherlock</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know why you didn’t show up at Angelo’s that night.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was you. At St Bart’s. I couldn’t save you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You died, Sherlock.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please. Don’t do what you’re about to do.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I love you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s taken me all this time to say it, but I love you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And if you care for me, like I think you do. Don’t do this. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Wait for me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m here.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>His eyes were full of the tears he hadn’t cried, his throat choked with the lump he hadn’t cleared. He knew every one of his words he’d written by heart, and now Sherlock had them.</p><p>Then a noise, above him, ringing loudly in the silence of the house: a thump and something that sounded like the click of a sole on a floorboard. John’s eyes raised slowly to the ceiling above his head.</p><p><em>Wait for me. </em>He’d said.</p><p>The waiting may have seemed interminable to John, but it had only been minutes. To Sherlock, it would have been years. Would he? Could he, have waited?</p><p>Then the noise again, unmistakably footsteps this time, crossing the hardwood floor of the room above him, followed by the sound of the sitting room door. John’s stomach dropped as he leapt to his feet, whirling to look back up the stairs.</p><p>A figure had emerged onto the landing. John craned his neck to see, but they’d already begun to descend the steps; out of sight.</p><p>John couldn’t breathe.</p><p>Finally, with calm steps, they reached the turn in the stairs and came fully into view. John stared upwards from the hallway in mute incomprehension.</p><p>It was Sherlock.</p><p> </p><p>A wave of relief washed over John, so powerful he had to raise his hands to the back of his head, forcing the air out of his lungs as his heart pounded wildly in his chest.</p><p>Sherlock continued to descend the stairs, the expression on his face visible now: calm and resolute, his eyes bright, the curl of a smile on the corner of his mouth.</p><p>“I…” John started abortively, aware of his mouth moving. Sherlock stepped down the final three stairs and stood before him, eyes raking John’s face as if drinking him in.</p><p>“Sher…” John started again but was overcome. He was drowning in so much emotion it felt like it was spilling over. Was he crying?</p><p>“Fuck it.” He said finally, articulately. And surged forward, hand coming up to the back of Sherlock’s neck and drawing him down to capture his mouth with a fierce passion he didn’t think himself capable of.</p><p>Sherlock responded in kind, pouring body and soul into the kiss.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well!</p><p>There we go! </p><p>If I was sticking strictly to the film that would be where we ended. But I can't help thinking we need a bit of an Epilogue...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>JOHN</p><p>“You waited,” John said in awe as they pulled apart,</p><p>“You told me to.” Sherlock’s face was barely a hairs-breadth from John’s, so close he could feel the words against his lips.</p><p>“You got my note.”</p><p>“I did.” Sherlock was grinning. “I have it here.”</p><p>“You do?” John pulled back, running his hand across his face to chase away the tracks of his tears, as Sherlock slipped a hand into his own inside jacket pocket, pulling free a very flimsy piece of receipt paper.</p><p>He handed it carefully to John, who studied it, confirming that it was indeed the note he’d written only minutes ago, but aged, as if it were years old. It was years old.</p><p>John’s eyes flicked over to the writing desk, sitting innocuously beside them.</p><p>“I don’t understand.”</p><p>“Me either,” Sherlock agreed, with a pleasant shrug, as if he were quite happy with the idea of not knowing things.</p><p>“How did it…?”</p><p>“Do you really care?” Sherlock asked and John looked back up at his face, seeing the gentle smile there, “It saved my life. <em>You</em> saved my life.”</p><p>Sherlock drew close to John again, resting his fingers lightly along John’s jaw and holding his gaze. Before pulling him close for another kiss.</p><p>John fell into it: the softness of his lips, the calm, confident way they moved against his.</p><p>“Come upstairs.” Sherlock said in a low rumble against John’s mouth.</p><p>“God, yes,” Was all John could say in return.</p><p> </p><p>Climbing the stairs behind Sherlock felt like walking through a dream. John found himself staring at the other man’s back in amazement, and no small amount of admiration, as he was led up and along the landing to the open sitting room door.</p><p>The room behind it was like stepping back in time. Everything was the same: the chairs, the coffee table, the bison skull on the wall. John wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting: perhaps that cold, empty room he’d seen last year, certainly not this.</p><p>He was aware that he was gaping.</p><p>“You’ve moved back in.”</p><p>“Yep,” Said Sherlock, popping the ‘p’ and whirling around frantically ahead of John to tidy the objects left in various places around him. “Some time ago now,”</p><p>“But…” John started, confused.</p><p>“Time-travel, John,” Sherlock said, as if it explained everything.</p><p>John let the words hang for a moment, repeating them internally to make sure he’d heard it right. Then he decided he had and asked:</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You changed everything.” Sherlock replied straightforwardly.</p><p>“I did?”</p><p>“Yes,”</p><p>“But how?”</p><p>“I have absolutely no idea…”</p><p>“You always have an idea.” John said affectionately.</p><p>“Not this time.” Sherlock had stopped still and was standing in the centre of the room, watching him. Each time Sherlock looked at him at was as if he was looking for the first time, drinking in the sight.</p><p>John wondered if he was blushing.</p><p>“You’re telling me that note…” John started to cover it,</p><p>“Not just that note. Every note. I’m a different person because I know you, John.” A careful smile, Sherlock looked as though he wanted to move forward, to touch him again.</p><p>“You solved the case?” John asked, deflecting slightly, thinking perhaps that was it.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Would you have? If I hadn’t…?”</p><p>“Oh yes,” Sherlock said bluntly, and John’s ideas were dashed. “Of course, I can only surmise at who that person was before, that other me, the one you saw jump from that rooftop...”</p><p>“You jumped?” John got stuck on the word, cutting in.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“You weren’t… pushed?”</p><p>Sherlock paused, considering.</p><p>“I doubt it. Was there a suspect?” He asked, interested, “Anyone on the rooftop?”</p><p>“I never asked…” John said confused.</p><p>“An interesting possibility,” Sherlock said thoughtfully, seemingly impressed that John had raised something he’d not thought of. “But probably unlikely…” He concluded.</p><p>“So you jumped, why?”</p><p>“<em>I</em> didn’t jump,” Sherlock replied calmly,</p><p>“Well no, obviously, you’re standing here, but the other you.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Because he didn’t know you,”</p><p>John’s eyebrows raised.</p><p>Sherlock paused before replying, studying John’s face with that singular focus, before stepping a single pace forward.</p><p>“Before you, I thought that being alone would protect me.” He said, dropping his voice to something more intimate, “I thought other people were unnecessary, that I was stronger without them. I was wrong.”</p><p>“I…” John started, lost in the low rumble of Sherlock’s voice.</p><p>“Knowing that you were out there, it gave me faith, in people, probably for the first time. I let them in. I made… friends.” He got stuck a little on the word.</p><p>John noticed and smiled; Sherlock ducked his gaze.</p><p>“They helped you?”</p><p>“Both figuratively and literally,” Sherlock said, looking at him again,</p><p>“They helped you to find Moriarty?”</p><p>“Oh no, I did that on my own.” Sherlock said, with his familiar self-assuredness, John smiled again, “But he underestimated their import. He knew nothing of you, how could he? He didn’t know I’d changed, he relied on me trying to face him alone.”</p><p>“But you didn’t?”</p><p>“I made him think that I had, but it was planned. Everyone was aware of it. There was a code.”</p><p>“A code?”</p><p>“‘There’s been a threat on your life’,” Sherlock repeated methodically.</p><p>“That was the code? Or that was what was happening?”</p><p>“Both. It served double duty. We knew he would likely make a threat on their lives, and prepared them.”</p><p>“We?”</p><p>“My brother and I,”</p><p>“You have a brother?” John asked surprised.</p><p>“Yes.” Sherlock said, “With significant connections. He helped craft the case against him.”</p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Then it was just a case of luring him into a situation he thought he was in charge of.”</p><p>“You were wearing a wire?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sherlock looked impressed at John’s guess. “But he was clever,”</p><p>“Moriarty?”</p><p>“Yes. I can’t speak for that other Sherlock, the one in your time, but my instinct is that he wouldn’t have asked for help, he wouldn’t have had anyone <em>to</em> ask. I wouldn’t have, before I met you. But if I had. If I had known to ask for help; even if I’d done everything as I did. Moriarty was clever. He still managed to lure me into a place where I thought that jumping was my only option. And I might have done it. If it hadn’t been for that last letter.”</p><p>They both looked down at it, still in John’s hand.</p><p>“You came back? You found it?”</p><p>“Yes, when I came to warn Mrs Hudson,”</p><p>“They threatened Mrs Hudson?!” John’s had snapped up, anger flaring. </p><p>“She was never in any danger,” Sherlock assured him, smiling slightly, “There were more officers here that morning than there were left at New Scotland Yard. I made sure of it.”</p><p>John huffed out a laugh.</p><p>“Did you mean what you said?” Sherlock asked, a shyness creeping in at the edge of the words.</p><p>John dropped his gaze to look at the letter again, overcome. He could pretend not to know what Sherlock was referring to, but there was no use, he’d not long ago written the words with his own hand, despite the fact that the ink was faded with years of age.</p><p>“Of course I did, Sherlock,” John’s voice was barely more than a desperate whisper, he raised his face to smile at him, “Of course I do.”</p><p>Sherlock’s face, shuttered before, opened with a widening smile. John realised that Sherlock had had two years to question the statement.</p><p>“You don’t need…” John started, wanting to leap in and assure him he was under no obligation to say it back, but at the same moment Sherlock spoke himself:</p><p>“I love you too,” He said. Then stopped, bashful as he realised they’d spoken over each other.</p><p>They smiled, awkward.</p><p>John stepped forward, moving back into Sherlock’s space and studying his face with a fond smile.</p><p>“You’re still in your scrubs,” Sherlock said very quietly, they were so close there was no need to speak any louder.</p><p>“I thought you didn’t like to state the obvious.”</p><p>“They look good on you.”</p><p>“Thanks,” John's face threatened to split apart with his smile, “I came straight from work.”</p><p>They looked at each other, revelling in their closeness.</p><p>“Work.” John said suddenly. “I’m on shift…”</p><p>“No, you’re not.”</p><p>“I’m not?” John asked in confusion.</p><p>“A lot has changed.” Sherlock stated calmly.</p><p>“It has?”</p><p>“You changed time,” Sherlock said, John looked at him in confusion. “By sending that letter, you changed everything. I moved in here for a start.”</p><p>“But how…”</p><p>“How can you still be here?” Sherlock asked.</p><p>John nodded.</p><p>“I have no idea. It’s a paradox.”</p><p>“But…” John was absolutely lost, his brain tracking the details in circles behind his eyes.</p><p>“Don’t ask too many questions, John,” Sherlock whispered, moving in close. “I find the whole thing makes much more sense if you don’t think about it too hard.”</p><p>And he kissed him.</p>
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